Bill Gates Wants Rich Countries To Help Africa Attain Food Self-Sufficiency To Avoid Famine

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates who co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pitched for greater food self-sufficency for Africa as it battles famine and climate change.

What Happened: In a recent essay titled “The Future Of Progress” Gates said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created yet another “humanitarian crisis” for Africa.

The tech entrepreneur said that agricultural productivity in Africa has lagged behind the global average.

“When a region can’t grow enough to feed its people, there’s only one solution—to import food—which Africa does on the order of US$23 billion a year,” he wrote.

In the essay, Gates advocated the use of what he called “magic seeds” — hybrids created by breeding select varieties of the crop.

In an interview with Time Magazine, Gates said, “We want the Green Revolution [a crop science intervention that transformed Asian agriculture in the 1970s] for Africa.”

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Why It Matters: The former Microsoft CEO is pressing for rich nations to do more, he said, “we want rich countries to give 0.7% of [their] GDP [to fund climate adaptation]. It’s not a gigantic sacrifice,” according to Time.

“We need to focus our aid on low-income countries, and particularly on the agricultural piece, where the climate is creating this incredible problem,” he added.

Gates also talked with MSNBC anchor Ari Melber and said that Africans were suffering “massively” due to climate change “which they did nothing to cause” and is due to "the emissions from rich countries."

He also touched on artificial intelligence and said the technology could be used to bolster agricultural productivity as it can be help analyze “complex” plant genomes. 

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Photo: Courtesy of Red Maxwell on flickr