The Gates Foundation This week has celebrated its 25th anniversary. Founded in 2000 when Melinda French Gates was 35 years old and Bill Gates 44 (and was the richest man in the world), she quickly became one of the most important philanthropic organizations in history. Therefore, and because talking to Gates is always a “song”, The New York Times and The Financial Times They have had access to an extensive interview. He has rarely left such powerful headlines. Gates goes against Elon Musk and announces the plan to liquidate a fortune of 200 billion dollars.
A transcendental decision. Yes, at 25 years of its foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation He has announced that he will definitely close its doors on December 31, 2045, after having allocated more than 100,000 million dollars to improve global health and human development and with the commitment to double that figure in the next 20 years. Gates, who will allocate almost all of his personal fortune to this final stage, argues that current scientific tools, including advances in AI, offer A unique opportunity to achieve radical changes that make its institutional continuity unnecessary.
This strategy responds not only to an impulse of efficacy and urgency, but also to the finding of a worrying setback in international cooperation, aggravated by the dismantling of programs like Usaid Under the administration of Donald Trump, whose decisions They could be translated into millions of additional children’s deaths in the coming decades. Gates, although still optimistic, admits that global philanthropy is going through its most delicate moment since the beginning of the century.
Elon Musk and moral terrain. The struggle between two of the most influential figures in the contemporary world, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, It was knownbut now it has reached a new and sour dimension with the very hard statements of the founder of Microsoft. Gates accused in the Financial Times Musk of being responsible, although indirectly, of “killing the poorest children in the world” after the dismantling of the USAID, a measure promoted by Doge, the entity created by Musk and backed by the US government.
Not just that. Gates denounced that this decision, taken (according to him) since ignorance, has paralyzed the Distribution of essential medicines and food in vulnerable areas, in addition to putting fundamental programs for public health in countries such as Mozambique, where a hospital that avoided the transmission of HIV from mothers to children was affected by cuts that Musk He erroneously justified When confusing the African province of Gaza With the Palestinian region of the same name.
An ideological and long enmity. As we said, the confrontation between Gates and Musk is not new. In 2012, both initially coincided in the GIVING PLEDGEa commitment to donate much of his fortune to philanthropic causes, but Musk soon described traditional philanthropy of “garbage”defending commercial solutions such as Tesla electric vehicles as more effective tools against challenges such as climate change.
His distancing was aggravated in 2022, when Musk knew that Gates had Around short Against Tesla’s actions, which unleashed his anger and caused a public response out of tone in social networks. According to the biography written by Walter Isaacson, this revelation marked A point of no return between them.
A moral and financial setback. Therefore, Gates’s announcement comes in the midst of unprecedented divestment in foreign aid. The drastic 80 % reduction In the USAID budget, cuts to key programs like Pepfar And the decline in international cooperation in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and France, illustrate what Gates Describe in the Times as a dangerous collective withdrawal of commitment to the poorest.
The paradox, As explainedIt is that while science and health innovation offer viable solutions to eradicate diseases such as HIV, malaria or tuberculosis, moral and political impulse to finance these solutions seems to be disappearing. It emphasizes that instead of consolidating the achievements of the last two decades, the world is on the verge of reversenot due to lack of resources, but for a weakening of the “humanitarian impulse” that, until recently, defined rich democracies.
A finite legacy. Gates He argues thatby establishing a closing date and not trying to perpetuate the legacy of its foundation, you can allocate many more resources immediately and decisively. This approach, which describes how A “BOLUS DOSE” philanthropic (a great power injection), will allow the annual expenditure of the foundation for about 9,000 million dollars and concentrate on key areas such as maternal child health, the eradication of infectious diseases and the fight against structural poverty.
Gates believes that, thanks to innovation accumulated in recent years, it is possible achieve ambitious objectives How to half reduce infant mortality, eliminate endemic diseases in Africa and double agricultural productivity in the continent. All this while driving the use of AI in local contexts (from medical diagnoses to agronomist in regional dialects) as a motor to close historical gaps.
Between optimism and urgency. In both talks, although he acknowledges that pandemic and debt crisis in the poorest countries have stopped decades of progress, insists that the panorama It is not irreversible. See in technology, in collaboration with new philanthropic actors and in the example of a foundation with expiration date, A realistic route to return strength to the global movement for equity.
He also states that he does not want to build a monument to his fortune, but return it to the service of humanity at the time you can have more impact. In front of a new generation of more billionaires centered on space exploration Or in individual interests, the man claims the urgency of acting now to avoid millions of avoidable deaths and definitively transform the living conditions of the most disadvantaged. In his own words, if it is not achieved now, what alternative would he have? Give your money on ships?
The answer, according to Gates, is morally obvious.
Image | World Economic, Ted Conference
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings