When one of the World’s richest couples decides to divorce then yes we are all warrant to Tweet our P and Qs. So, as the social media world continues to dot the couples’ i’s and cross their t’s let as look at ‘the poor man’ in one of the World’s wealthiest people.
As of February this year, Bill Gates’ net worth of over $137 billion, keeping the world renown philanthropist right up their with the rest of the World’s richest people.
But that is not what makes Bill Gates standout, it is his willingness to aide the world’s poorest that sets him apart from the other World titans.
Only recently, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has set aside a $306 million package in agricultural development grants for Africa and other parts of the developing World.
Over the years, Bill Gates has invariably donated and granted Africa millions upon millions of dollars for a host of development programs.
It is not far fetched to say there is hardly a single African child, especially in rural Africa, who has not in some way or another not benefitted from Bill Gates contribution to Africa’s development.
His commitment to assist the development of one of the World’s poorest continents sets him aside from his wealthy counterparts. His devotion to help the poor is not only admirable but humbling; lt is like there is a poor man in Bill Gates that helps him understand the plight of the less fortunate.
The Developing World Has Been Neglected
In this, his latest contribution, the money will serve to boost farm yields and in turn raise the incomes of millions of small scale farmers all across Africa and other parts of the developing World as well.
In his speech as he announced the grants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates, said ‘…support for agriculture in the developing world had been relatively neglected in recent decades, but was a critical tool to drive development in rural areas, where the vast majority of the world’s poorest people still live.’
Gates, who is co-chair of the foundation, made the announcement along side Dr. A. Namanga Ngongi, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) which got $164.5 million of the Gates’ Foundation grant.
AGRA is channeling the money to fund its African Soil Health Program that is meant to revitalize Africa’s severely depleted soils in order to increase the fertility and sustainability of small-scale farms.
The project aims to boost the incomes and improve the well being of more than 4.1 million smallholder farmers through 50 to 100 percent increases in their crop yields.
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Committing To Support African Agriculture
“If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers most of whom are women,” the philanthropist Gates said.
“These investments from improving the quality of seeds, to developing healthier soil, to creating new markets will pay off not only in children fed and lives saved. They can have a dramatic impact on poverty reduction as families generate additional income and improve their lives,” he added.
The Bill and Melinda foundation believes that with strong partnerships and a redoubled commitment to agricultural development by donor and developing country governments along with the private sector, hundreds of millions of small farmers will be able to boost their yields and incomes and lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.
So while, the couple goes their separate ways, Africa remains united in it’s gratitude to the foundation’s commitment to support agriculture on the continent, the largest employer of all Africans.
Gates Foundation grants $24.6 million to aid maize farming in Tanzania(Opens in a new browser tab)
