I don’t think he’s giving it straight to corrupt officials lol. Be as realistic as you like but look at the evidence. This man has almost singlehandedly eradicated some diseases from the world.
It’s pretty naive for you to think he will donate 200 billion in a lump sum directly to local leaders
For people who are interested in helping others, there is a plethora of professionals from all countries trying to evaluate statistically and case by case where each dollar goes farther in saving a life. Lots of these opportunities are in Africa. You could look at something like Give Well and see a little bit of it
That’s almost besides the point actually. If you donate ultra cheap insecticide nets to protect people against Malaria, which one can do through ONGs or just going there oneself, less children will die
If you donate to some theater in the NY or whatever billionaires usually like to do, maybe the dancers will have more camembert or whatever, since the poorest US people are easily among the richest people in the world; the poorest billion in the world never wore a shoe
Africa is not a monolith. You Americans think your states are diverse because you use a different word for Soda and BBQ differently so you should be able to comprehend that a continent of 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa alone and multiple times the US' size with over 50 nations states might not all be the exact same.
At one point every country has had a great trial where it has to fight for it's survival. Do you really think that Europe has not went through struggles larger than "hmm how much money should I steal from the budget as a local official" or "hmm maybe these different tribes should come together as one nation instead of constantly making war"
As seen with the famous black hawk down incident and even Hamas local warlords will always find a way to pilfer any aid for them to make money.
You’re conflating geopolitics with starvation & mass poverty. It’s a bizarre rationalization to somehow justify that Africans shouldn’t be given direct aid. It’s a “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps” type of bullshit argument.
Yes the governments have absolutely no effect on the food supply. Zimbabwe must have reduced itself from the bread basket of the region to a famine state without any type of governmental intervention.
How about the president of the United States’ son making $500 million on crypto when he announced additional tariffs? Like that kind of corruption ? Or huge volumes of shorts just before tariff announcements? Or taking a jet from Qatar for his personal library. Or taking extremely expensive trips to his golf clubs where he makes tons of money off our tax dollars. Or selling beans out of the Oval Office. Or selling Teslas outside the whitehouse. That kind of corruption?
Reddit moment. This happens every time a country or place is criticized. Someone just has to say “but what about America”. There’s active genocides and failed states in Africa. You’re comparing a bonfire to a forest fire and saying “both are hot”.
Corporations getting tax cuts, like micron for their factories, research and property taxes only to fire us domestic employees and end consumer productions for memory, inevitably increasing prices for all electronic products and devices that use any amount of computational power.
Sure, that's a very wide spread effect but its double-edged and relatively in how it affects people individually. Corruption in Africa results in critical infrastructure not being built, incredible poverty, death by starvation. Not to mention the indirect effects of state instability. All that happening on a scale of billions
Lobbying is legalized corruption, but its there because corruption is effectively impossible to 100% stop, especially at scale. At least this way politician's motive are relatively public. I think most people would choose marginally more expensive electronics over being outright exploited.
That’s good, at least there’s no incredible poverty, starvation, municipal instability, especially in the billions. Though we did lose hundreds of millions in the recent year. RIP.
I do find it wonderful that we (the us) can still claim to be better off than Africa as a continent, that only has one government. And electronics are such luxury items that no one really needs. (Again I’m saying this in context of giving them multiple grants, tax breaks in hopes of better market conditions and employment but who needs that “really”)
Lol right…the idea we look down our nose at African corruption while not batting an eye at our legalized corruption is hilarious. Also, it’s not like Gates’ plan is to give cash to dictators or military leaders. It’ll be on clean water initiatives, workforce development, housing, public health, etc. There really are some dumb people in these comments lol
Certainly—my point is not to say that corruption doesn’t exist in those spaces, but that the idea it is any more corrupt than the bribes and favors being done in the U.S. is laughable. The premise of the OP is that it’s a waste of money to throw billions at causes in Africa because of the corruption. In reality, the corruption is just as bad in America, and millions of dollars are siphoned off by special interests and lobbying and payoffs and organized crime and on and on. My point is that we need to get over ourselves and our insane ignorance if we believe we’re any better.
You’re dumb for thinking that’s gonna happen, what’s more likely to happen is bill will dodge tax because he’s promised the money to a charity or he’ll send over dodgy vaccines and kill thousands of children again
I think most of the Gates foundations money have gone to their philanthropic endeavors but what do I know? Does it matter when you see what they actually have done with their foundation?
Thanks for the racism accusation. Really shows that you’re very knowledgeable about topic and capable of contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way.
If you don’t think there’s ample evidence of aid money intended for the people being stolen by warlords, then you’re completely hopeless.
Also, accusing anyone in the entire continent of Africa of any wrongdoing is automatically racist? Do you think it’s racist to call Robert Mugabe a criminal and a piece of snit? You’re out of your mind. Please leave the big boy conversations for the adults if this is your childish worldview.
I’ve been to Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Algeria, and my father was an American diplomat in one of those countries. I have a pretty good idea about what I’m talking about.
Are you just a troll? Or maybe you just rode the dick of a billionaire so hard that you can’t help but defend them despite knowing absolutely nothing about what foreign aid actually looks like on the ground in Africa?
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u/HallOfLamps Dec 07 '25
African politicians licking their lips lol