In June, a new multibillion-dollar donation for Africa was announced. A move aimed squarely at laying the critical foundations for the continent of ebony to unfold its potential in the future. A structural debt that only Bill Gates can help settle with the planet’s most neglected continent.
Bill Gates, one of the world’s 15 centibillionaires, recounts a personal story that is not the typical tale of someone who rose from humble origins to wealth and prosperity. His family had always enjoyed a comfortable standard of living, though not wealth. His father, William (1925–2020), was a notable lawyer, philanthropist, and civic activist of his time. His mother, Mary Ann (1929–1994), a woman of strong character, instilled in young Bill and his two sisters a particular relationship with money. This teacher, banker, and fierce social advocate explained to her children time and again that possessing great wealth also implied a great responsibility: that of helping improve the fate of the less fortunate.
Sensing her son’s innate potential, his mother insisted on sending him to an elite school: Lakeside, in Seattle. Although it posed a financial strain for the family, she refused her husband’s pressure to choose a less costly institution. Lakeside was then a pioneering school in technology and, as early as 1968, it already had a computer lab available to its students. This decisive circumstance marked a before and after in young Gates’s life, altering his destiny forever. At Lakeside, he not only discovered a vital passion when he became fascinated with computing and binary language, but also met Paul Allen, who would become a close friend and later a partner in launching a revolution in human history with the founding of Microsoft.
Records from Gates’s student years recall that even the highly qualified teachers at Lakeside could not fully grasp how that massive computer functioned, while four students—including Gates—experimented with it day and night. “Coming into contact with that prehistoric computer was the beginning of everything. If I hadn’t gone to Lakeside and had that early experience of discovery, perhaps history today would be different,” Gates recounted. He also summarizes this in his recent autobiography as his guiding philosophy: “much of what one becomes has always been there.”
Sound Decisions, Strategic Donations
The wise decision of a mother who followed her instinct in guiding her son’s education, combined with the values of responsibility instilled around the proper use of money, would bear fruit in time. More than five decades after those formative years at home and school, Bill Gates announced that the majority of his current fortune (98%) will be donated to Africa.
In early June, Gates made public his wish, at this stage of his life and through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to help radically transform the lives of many in Africa. This substantial support will be delivered through the funding of major projects in education and health. The sum—200 billion dollars—will be directed to specific objectives such as improving maternal and child health, fostering educational and economic development, and eradicating some of the most prevalent infectious diseases on the continent. Gates plans to complete the massive donation in stages, through an uninterrupted flow of funds to be disbursed over the next 20 years.
Gates explained that his decision to devote most of his fortune to projects in Africa is based on several factors he studied in depth. First, he is convinced that Africa’s development and growth will play a decisive role in the global future. However, given the widespread poverty in which it is mired and its lag in critical areas, the continent remains at a permanent disadvantage, unable to face the challenges of the times. Thus, without a concrete commitment to strengthen the critical foundations for its takeoff, Africa will be unable to develop, evolve, and share with the world all its potential, wealth, and cultural values.
The Foundation he leads with his ex-wife has long been working tirelessly in Africa, supporting initiatives in agriculture, health, and education. The new multibillion-dollar donation announced in June will accelerate and broaden the reach of ongoing projects, and in 20 years, when the donation is complete, Gates hopes—just as his mother Mary Ann taught him—to have fulfilled his life’s mission: simply to help ensure that everyone can access a future with equal opportunities for development.
