Bill Gates ‘horrified’ by cuts to US aid overseas, warns children will die

USAID, which has now been folded into the US State Department, managed a budget of up to $50 billion last year, running hundreds of humanitarian and economic developmental projects around the world. It was dismantled in February by the Trump administration for being non-aligned with the administration’s America First campaign pledges. “USAID was a wonderful organization that I think if people had known what they do, they wouldn’t have cut that money. But here we are,” said Gates.

Gates Foundation was started by Gates and his former wife Melinda French Gates in 2000 to help reduce inequity in global health and in education in the United States. Since then the foundation has claimed success in helping to save millions of lives around the world from diseases like malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis with a range of initiatives, including vaccine programs and over a hundred innovations. But in an open letter announcing his plans today, he acknowledged that he could not ignore that progress had been made by partnerships with governments: “No philanthropic organization — even one the size of the Gates Foundation — can make up the gulf in funding that’s emerging right now,” he wrote.

He told Semafor the cuts will have notable consequences: “I’d say in the next five years, some of our key figures, like the number of children who die or vaccine coverage levels, some of those will actually go backwards.”

One of the notable aspects of slashing foreign aid budgets, particularly by the US, has been a response from some Africans acknowledging that their own governments need to do more for their citizens and fully cut the cord of dependency. Gates told me he certainly agrees with that sentiment and noted some Asian countries had “largely graduated” from dependency, but he also cited examples in Rwanda and Tanzania as countries that have been making progress in building capacity in primary health care for their citizens. And yet, he wrote in his letter, “it’s still not enough, especially at a moment when many African countries are spending so much money servicing their debts that they cannot invest in the health of their own people — a vicious cycle that makes economic growth impossible.”

Some of the most important work the Gates Foundation has done on the continent has been around vaccine promotion, But that is also an area where the Bill Gates ‘brand’ has become tainted on African social media, with conspiracy theories shared widely on platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook about his true intentions with Africans. Those conspiracies really took hold around the global pandemic.

Gates said his team monitored the “wild talk” but seemed to recognize the challenge of “some man who has a lot of money who’s far away, does he have our best interests at heart?’” He said the foundation would continue to work with government leaders, civil society leaders and religious leaders to avoid rumors “[getting] out of control.”

While the Trump administration has been quick to slash aid budgets that do not align with its America First philosophy, it has also asked the US Congress to approve $3.2 billion in contributions to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), which provides grants and low-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries. The figure surprised some observers who had thought the administration would skip making contributions, according to Reuters.