Bill Gates Calls for New Innovative Ideas to Help the World

As part of his annual letter about his philanthropic work, Bill Gates calls for new, and sometimes experimental, efforts to innovate education and public health in Africa and other impoverished regions of the world.

In the 14-page letter, published Sunday nigbt on the Web site of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s wealthiest man also presses nations to provide more foreign aid and explains why he has not focused his philanthropy on a growing global problem: climate change.

Mr. Gates released his first letter to the public in 2009, the first year in which he worked full-time as the co-chair of his foundation alongside his wife, Melinda, and his father.

As with the 2009 letter, Mr. Gates does not announce any changes in his $34-billion foundation’s grant making, but he does offer a glimpse into his thinking and his hopes for the future.

“Despite the tough economy, I am still very optimistic about the progress we can make in the years ahead,” he writes. “A combination of scientific innovations and great leaders who are working on behalf of the world’s poorest people will continue to improve the human condition.”

The former software mogul says that his foundation is focused on supporting new technology and other innovations, some of them high-risk, that governments and corporations would not back.

Child Mortality

He spends the bulk of the letter examining potential breakthroughs in curbing child mortality abroad, like eradicating polio, and improving American education through new practices like online learning.

Shifting gears, Mr. Gates admonishes some wealthy countries for not fulfilling their pledges to increase government spending on antipoverty efforts overseas. Acting like a public advocate for the world’s poor, a role in which he has increasingly been more comfortable with, Mr. Gates specifically criticizes Italy for lowering its foreign-assistance budget.

“In June, I met with Prime Minister Berlusconi personally to make the case for more support, but I was unsuccessful. This is a huge disappointment since I still think the Italian public wants to be as generous as people in other countries,” he writes.

Climate Change

At the end of his letter, Mr. Gates briefly responds to why his foundation does not give to efforts to fight climate change, something several environmentalists have chided him for.

He writes that market forces and governments can pay for the large-scale energy research projects to discover ways to produce electricity that are cheaper than coal and don’t produce greenhouse gases; philanthropy therefore is not needed.

That said, Mr. Gates says he takes a personal interest in the subject and will discuss ideas about clean energy on his new Web site called Gates Notes.

In all, Mr. Gates says his new foundation work is immensely fulfilling, especially the opportunities to travel to Kenya and other places where he sees progress against the often-intractable problems his foundation seeks to change.

“Seeing the work firsthand reminds me of how urgent the needs are as well as how challenging it is to get all the right pieces to come together,” he writes. “I love my
new job and feel lucky to get to focus my time on these problems.”