Google – AFP, Sebastian Smith (AFP), 30 January 2013
 |
Bill Gates
speaks during an interview January 30, 2013 in New York
(AFP, Stan Honda)
|
NEW YORK —
Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and highest profile aid donors, says
he doesn't care if he's forgotten after his death -- as long as polio and other
major diseases have been eradicated.
"I
don't need to be remembered at all," the co-founder of Microsoft, 57, told
AFP in New York.
Gates has a
fortune estimated by Forbes at $66 billion, second only to Mexican telecoms
tycoon Carlos Slim, and the satisfaction of knowing that Microsoft products are
at the heart of computers in every corner of the world.
But he says
that since quitting the running of Microsoft and focusing on his Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, it's the world's poorest that have his attention.
"None
of the people who are at risk of polio know anything about me, nor should they.
They are dealing with day to day life and the fact that their child might get
crippled," Gates said in an interview at a posh Manhattan hotel.
Already the
foundation has paid out $25 billion to projects fighting disease and extreme
poverty. There's currently about $36 billion left in the pot -- and it's all
going to go.
"My
wife and I have decided that our foundation will spend all its money within 20
years of when neither of us are around, so we're not trying to create some
perpetual thing," Gates said.
Target
number one is polio, which has now been eradicated in India. Gates says a
worldwide end to the crippling childhood disease is feasible, with only
Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan the trouble spots.
"Within
my lifetime, polio's not the only disease we should be able to eradicate. Even
malaria -- although that's more like a several decades effort -- should be
within reach," he said.
Gates said
that traditional government aid packages from rich countries to poor countries
have been inefficient, or worse. "A lot of that was about buying
friendship and almost shouldn't be labeled aid," he said, referring to the
Cold War era, when Western and Soviet programs fought for influence in Africa
and elsewhere.
The way
forward, Gates said, is to take a page from the corporate playbook and tie aid
to specific goals, with close monitoring of progress.
"Business
is always focused on measurements and if they get it wrong, they don't get
capital and in extreme cases the company goes out of business," he said.
"Government
and philanthropy don't naturally do the same thing," he said.
Gates
expressed optimism about the ability of aid to do good, citing "the most
rapid improvement ever in history" in reducing child mortality and the
resurgence of countries such as Ethiopia that were not so long ago considered
basket cases.
"It's
not the normal cynical view," he said.
However,
Gates warned of growing pitfalls, including one close to home: the often
appalling state of the US school system.
Asian
schools "have gone way past us in quality," Gates said, and that's
because they apply a businesslike approach to monitoring the performance of
their teachers.
"The
idea of measuring and giving feedback, that's what we're missing," he
said. "Feedback is how you drive that excellence. In some areas, like
baseball, we measure, we know your batting average -- we're serious about
baseball. But education is also worth being serious about."
Gates'
views on the need for bringing corporate efficiency to the aid world are laid
out in detail in his "annual letter," which he released Wednesday at:
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/
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