Blitz Bureau
MICROSOFT founder Bill Gates has said he plans to spend most of his $200 billion fortune on improving health and education services across Africa, reported africanews.com. According to the news portal, Gates made the announcement on June 2 in an address at the African Union headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Gates said that unleashing human potential by improving health and education, should put every country in Africa on a path to prosperity. He also urged the continent’s young innovators to think about how to use Artificial Intelligence to improve healthcare. Last month, the 69-year-old announced that he would give away 99 per cent of his vast fortune by 2045, by when the Gates Foundation plans to end its operations.
Writing in blog post last month, Gates said that people will say a lot of things about him when he dies, but that he was determined that ‘he died rich’ would not be one of them. Mozambique’s former First Lady Graça Machel welcomed his announcement, saying it came at a “moment of crisis”.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has cut aid to Africa, raising concerns about the future of healthcare on the continent. The Gates Foundation has disbursed more than $100 billion since the tech billionaire co-founded it in 2000 with his then wife Melinda French Gates. Bloomberg reported that giving away 99 per cent of his fortune could still leave the fifth-richest person in the world a billionaire.
