Ithateng Mokgoro

Activist, Architect, Artist, Blogger, Brainstormer, Change Agent, Connector, Designer, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Marketer, Parent

I’m a thinker, writer, and designer focused on building liberatory African futures. My work blends historical depth, speculative foresight, and ethical clarity to create ideas and experiences that inspire and endure. As Creative Director of TEDxJohannesburg and co-founder of KuMo&Co, I help leaders shape and share meaningful ideas. This includes narrative strategy, speaker coaching, and design-led collaboration. From TEDx curation to Substack essays, I work across platforms with a single aim: to prototype African futures through design, prose, and conversation.

What drives me is a belief that liberatory African futures are something we must actively create, rather than merely uncover. My work is to imagine, and build, what comes next. Imagination isn’t decoration, it’s infrastructure. Twelve passions guide my work: • Liberatory African futures • Imagination as infrastructure • Public storytelling • Speaker development • Design thinking • Decolonial critique • Ubuntu and indigenous knowledge • Writing and publishing • Art and curation • Family legacy and memory work • Ethical use of AI • Strategic partnerships

Liberatory African futures must be designed, not discovered — they don’t lie waiting in someone else’s vision of progress. They emerge when we centre African agency, honour our histories, and treat imagination as infrastructure.

African Futures, Design, Innovation, Speaker Coaching, TEDx

In 2008, I was part of a small team trying to do something wildly ambitious: bring TED to Cape Town. Not a satellite event. Not a livestream — TED, hosted on African soil and organised by a local team. We had a vision, a venue, and a growing circle of believers. But we also had a problem: fundraising. With six months to go and no viable path forward, we made the tough call to cancel. Looking back, it was a failure. But the kind that opens future pathways. I believe the lessons we learned helped shape what would become the TEDx model — a decentralised, community-led format rooted in a powerful truth: ideas change everything. I’m proud to have played a small part in that shift. That same year, I attended TED2008 in Monterey, the final TED held in its original, intimate venue. I was in the room when Dr Jill Bolte Taylor delivered "My Stroke of Insight." It wasn’t just a talk; it was a rupture. A standing ovation that felt like a door swinging open. That moment stayed with me. It reminded me that the right idea, shared with truth and precision, can move hearts and reshape the world. In 2010, we founded TEDxSoweto to create a stage for voices rooted in township experience, brilliance, and complexity. Over time, we transitioned into TEDxJohannesburg, inheriting the licence from the original founding team. That shift allowed us to broaden our scope, reaching deeper into the city, the region, and the continent. Together with my wife and creative partner Kelo Kubu, along with our team of volunteer co-curators, producers, and collaborators, we’ve spent the years building platforms where African ideas can thrive and travel — not just to be heard, but to change how people think, feel, and act. We’ve hosted deep-dive salons, city-wide gatherings, climate-focused Countdown events, AI panel discussions, and quiet, high-impact dinners — each one designed to surface ideas that challenge, connect, and catalyse. TEDx, for us, is more than a format. It is a practice. A way of listening with intent, asking sharper questions, and creating space for voices that have long been overlooked. It is also a portal — one that links my love for storytelling, design, and deep thought with a wider mission: to prototype liberatory African futures. I believe the future is not something we stumble upon. It is something we design — not with certainty, but with imagination. Not with blueprints, but with the courage to ask, What if...? TEDx gave us a container. Africa gave us the content. And with every event, every talk, and every conversation, I am reminded that imagination is a form of infrastructure. The most powerful structures we can build begin with a single, beautifully disruptive idea.

I’m good at slowing things down. In fast-moving spaces full of noise, I have a quiet skill for pausing, listening deeply, and helping others surface what really matters. I often play the role of the still point — the one who brings clarity, rhythm, and intention to complexity.