Jonathan Ledgard is Director of Rossums, a new studio that seeks to identify technology opportunities for poorer communities. He was Director of the Future Africa Initiative at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) until 2016. Since 2012, he has led a consortium of leading roboticists, architects, and logisticians that seeks to build the first Droneport in the world in Africa in 2016.  

Jonathan Ledgard is a leading thinker on advanced technology, risk, and nature in emerging economies. He spent two decades as an award-winning frontline foreign correspondent for The Economist, reporting lead stories from over 50 countries and several wars – for the last decade as Africa correspondent. He has advised to board and head of state level on the near future at the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, ICRC, Global Humanitarian Labs, WeRobotics, Robohub, African Development Bank, COP 21, European Commission, Governments of Ethiopia, Seychelles, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and companies such as Google, IBM, WEF, Lombard Odier and Diageo.

His second novel, Submergence, a New York Times book of the year, is presently being adapted for Hollywood by Wim Wenders.

Jonathan Ledgard Believes Imagination Could Save the World – The New Yorker