Texting for Real with Bright Simons

Bright B. Simons is a Ghanaian technology innovator, Development Activist and Social Entrepreneur. As the Director of Development Research at the award-winning African think tank IMANI (www.imanighana.org), and as the President of the mPedigree Network (www.mPedigree.Net), he works to promote innovation as the best response to Africa’s various developmental challenges.

His insights have been shared through the Economist, New York Times, BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, Asian Times, and the BBC, where he is a regular commentator for the World Service.

Bright is a Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum and a member of its Global Agenda Councils (the organisation's foremost expert body).

Bright invented a system for large-scale supply chains between 2004 and 2005, that has been successfully deployed by some pharmaceutical companies to protect their brands from counterfeiters, and by consumers to instantly verify the genuineness of their medicines by means of a free text message. The concept is at the base of the mPedigree platform, arguably the most celebrated item of original technology to emerge from Africa.

Bright has consulted for the World Bank in the development of a new strategy for Africa, and for the West African Health Organisation in the context of the latter's recent wide-ranging policy on medicinal counterfeiting in the region. A TED and Ashoka Fellow, he is also both a Tech Award Laureate and a member of the Evian Group's Brain Trust at IMD, widely considered to be Europe's foremost business school.

In 2010, he became an Associate of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellowship.