Sorry, Mr Gates, your billions won't save Africa

On June 2 while addressing an audience in the Nelson Mandela Hall at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Bill Gates – the world's second richest person and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – announced that a significant portion of his nearly $200bn fortune would be directed towards improving primary healthcare and education across Africa over the next two decades. This extraordinary philanthropic pledge is expected to fulfil a commitment he made on May 8 to donate 'virtually all' of his wealth before the Gates Foundation permanently closes on December 31, 2045.
Former Mozambique first lady Graca Machel, a renowned humanitarian and global advocate for women's and children's rights, attended the event and welcomed the announcement. Describing the continent's current situation as at a 'moment of crisis', she declared: 'We are counting on Mr Gates's steadfast commitment to continue walking this path of transformation alongside us.'
The Gates Foundation has operated in Africa for more than two decades, primarily in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. Over the years, it has funded a range of programmes in areas such as nutrition, healthcare, agriculture, water and sanitation, gender equality and financial inclusion. In agriculture alone, it has spent about $6bn on development initiatives. Despite this substantial investment, the foundation's efforts have been the subject of widespread criticism both in Africa and internationally.
In particular, serious concerns have been raised about the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of the foundation's agricultural interventions – especially the Green Revolution model it has promoted through AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Co-founded in 2006 by the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, AGRA aimed to improve food security and reduce poverty for 30 million smallholder households in 11 sub-Saharan African countries by 2021. Nineteen years on, the agricultural transformation Gates envisioned – driven by American capital and know-how – has failed to materialise.
Experts argue that the Green Revolution model has not only fallen short on alleviating hunger and poverty but may in fact also be exacerbating both. Problems commonly cited include rising farmer debt, increased pesticide use, environmental degradation, declining crop diversity and a growing corporate stranglehold over Africa's food systems.
The limitations of Gates's agricultural ambitions are, arguably, unsurprising. The model is rooted in the American Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s – a technological shift linked to settler-colonial agricultural systems and racialised power structures. Gates's philanthropic ideology, shaped by this legacy, risks reproducing systems of dependency and ownership in the Global South.
At the core of the Green Revolution, past and present, is a belief in the supremacy of Western science and innovation. This worldview justifies the transfer of proprietary technologies to developing countries while simultaneously devaluing local knowledge systems and Indigenous expertise.
Despite its rhetorical commitment to equity, the Gates Foundation often prioritises and financially benefits researchers, pharmaceutical firms and agritech corporations in the West far more than the smallholder farmers and local specialists it claims to serve. Kenyan agroecologist Celestine Otieno has described this model as 'food slavery' and a 'second phase of colonisation'.
Meanwhile, the foundation's global health programmes have also drawn criticism for promoting technical, apolitical solutions that ignore the deeply rooted historical and political determinants of health inequity. Just as troubling is the fact that many of these interventions are implemented in poor communities with minimal transparency or local accountability.
As Gwilym David Blunt, a political philosopher and lecturer in international politics, notes, transnational philanthropy – exemplified by the Gates Foundation – grants the ultra-wealthy disproportionate power over public priorities. This undermines the principle of autonomy that undergirds any vision of distributive global justice, including the right of Africans to shape their own futures.
All of the African countries working with the Gates Foundation continue to face the enduring problems associated with foreign-designed economic interventions and chronic dependence on aid. South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, for instance, are all contending with the fallout from United States President Donald Trump's cuts to the US Agency for International Development.
Still, Gates's philanthropy is only one piece of a much larger, more entrenched problem.
No amount of aid can compensate for the absence of visionary, ethical and accountable leadership – or the political instability that plagues parts of the continent. In this vacuum, figures like Gates step in. But these interventions can be politically expedient and risk concealing deeper systemic dysfunction.
On June 1, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed awarded Gates the Grand Order of Merit of Ethiopia in recognition of the foundation's 25 years of contributions to the country. Yet even Gates would likely acknowledge that Ethiopia remains mired in corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency and persistent mismanagement of public funds.
Abiy's nationalist rhetoric and disastrous internal policies helped trigger a 2020–2022 civil war, which claimed the lives of up to 600,000 people. Although the conflict formally ended in November 2022, Amnesty International has reported that millions still await justice. Human rights violations remain widespread with little accountability for atrocities committed in Tigray and Oromia.
Despite overwhelming evidence, Abiy continues to deny any wrongdoing by his military, insisting in parliament that his forces have not committed war crimes. Such claims only underscore the deep crisis of leadership Ethiopia faces.
What Ethiopia – and many other African states – urgently need is not another influx of Western money but a radical overhaul of governance. Indeed, Gates's contributions may paradoxically help prop up the very systems of impunity and dysfunction that block meaningful progress.
This is why Machel's response to Gates's announcement was so disappointing. Rather than celebrating the promise of more Western aid, she could have used the moment to speak frankly about Africa's deeper crisis: corrupt, extractive and unaccountable leadership. Her suggestion that Africans should rely indefinitely on foreign benevolence is not only misguided – it also reinforces the very power dynamics that philanthropy claims to disrupt.
Yes, Gates's decision to donate most of his fortune to Africa is, of course, admirable. But as an outsider immersed in the logic of 'white saviourism' and 'philanthrocapitalism', he cannot fix a continent's self-inflicted wounds. No foreign billionaire can. Only Africans – through transparent, courageous and locally driven leadership – can.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

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'Now, it is exclusively a question of geopolitics, ousting the collective West from Africa, creating an anti-Western coalition,' explained Sergey Eledinov, a former Russian peacekeeper turned independent Africa specialist based in Dakar, Senegal. Last year saw another foreign player appear in the Malian conflict. A contingent of Wagner and Malian troops was ambushed by Tuareg rebels in Tinzaouaten, near the Algerian border, in July, claiming the lives of 84 Russian mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers, including Nikita Fedyanin, a blogger behind the Wagner-linked Telegram channel, Grey Zone. Ukraine's spy agency, the GUR, admitted it provided crucial intelligence to the rebels against Russia. There were also reports that Ukrainians taught the rebels how to operate drones. In response, Mali broke off diplomatic relations with Ukraine. 'We're not really sure if it's still ongoing,' Nossiter said about Ukraine's support. 'At the time, there were reports that other Ukrainian allies were pressuring Ukrainians not to do that,' he explained, noting that the perceived 'close ties between the jihadist groups and some of the separatists' may have made Kyiv's Western backers nervous. Now, given recent upsetting defeats against Malian and Russian troops, and the intensifying violence in northern Mali, it's questionable to many whether Wagner's mission was a success. 'The biggest crowning victory of the Malian military in the last couple of years was retaking this town, Kidal [in 2023], which was a long-time separatist stronghold,' Nossiter said. 'It's the kind of victory people point to and say: without Wagner, it wouldn't have been possible.' But at the same time, insecurity continues to be a major challenge, the Sahel researcher emphasised. 'The jihadists, just in the last two weeks, have attacked three major Malian military camps. They also attacked the city of Timbuktu, and they put an IED [improvised explosive device] at a joint Malian-Wagner training camp just outside of the capital city of Bamako,' he said. Meanwhile, the mercenaries have been accused of the deliberate deaths and disappearances of civilians in their counter-rebellion campaign. In February, a Tuareg convoy returning from a wedding reportedly came under fire from Wagner and Malian forces, killing at least 20 civilians, including children and elderly people. 'Overall, the Russian presence has helped the junta stay in power and appear strong, but it hasn't solved the deeper security problems, and it's led to more isolation from the West and international aid,' added Berger. The Russian position has also been weakened by developments elsewhere. 'Russia's position has become more precarious following the collapse of key logistics hubs in Syria, specifically the Tartous port and Khmeimim airbase, after the downfall of its protege Bashar al-Assad,' noted Alessandro Arduino, author of Money for Mayhem: Mercenaries, Private Military Companies, Drones, and the Future of War. In 2023, then-Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin mutinied against the Russian military leadership before he subsequently perished in a suspicious plane crash in August that year. Fearing another uprising, the Kremlin reined in Wagner and other paramilitaries, which have since been more tightly integrated into the command structure and the Africa Corps rose to prominence. According to Eledinov, this sparked some tension. 'Some of the Wagner fighters went over to the Africa Corps, but most of them stayed to serve in the assault squads,' he said. 'After the death of Prigozhin, the majority of fighters and commanders did not want to go over to the Africa Corps, as a result of which the Wagner assault squads remained in Mali to this day. I assume that now they had no choice [but to withdraw].' While there's substantial overlap between the two paramilitary groups, with some estimates claiming 70-80 percent of Africa Corps personnel being Wagner veterans, they are different organisations. 'A lot of reporting on this – especially in the early months after Africa Corps was first announced – assumed that Africa Corps and Wagner were the same thing, and that AC was just Wagner 'rebranded',' said Julia Stanyard, another analyst at the Global Initiative. 'In fact, they are separate entities. Africa Corps is more closely managed by the Russian Ministry of Defence and [Russia's military intelligence agency], the GRU, than Wagner ever was. However, they do have similarities, and many of those recruited to Africa Corps, including many of their commanding officers, are former Wagner mercenaries.' While Wagner actively engaged on the battlefield, the Africa Corps is set to serve in a more advisory capacity. 'Even after the death of Prigozhin and his mutiny, the Russian government is formalising its presence in the Sahel,' Lechner observed. 'It will be interesting to see how, now that Africa Corps is fully taking over the mission, to what extent Russia's military presence will have a different character within Mali. The Wagner units were extremely aggressive, operationally very often independent, often going out in direct combat on their own without even being accompanied by [Malian soldiers]. Africa Corps has been designed as more of a training mission, a force that is supposed to protect fixed assets. And it will probably be more bureaucratic because it's part of the MOD and risk-averse.' Although Wagner served Russian interests, as mercenaries, they still allowed the Kremlin plausible deniability. 'If earlier, everyone understood that Wagner was Russia, but formally, it was a private company, now, it is entirely Russia. And accordingly, Russia bears much more responsibility [for] all the ensuing consequences, namely purges of civilians, looting and so on,' said Eledinov. 'There is no military resolution to this conflict by force. Without negotiations, it only escalates the degree of the conflict.'