Don't bank on billionaires to save the world

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In recent years, we have seen a slew of billionaires, such as Warren Buffet or Mike Zuckerburg, decide to donate vast sums of money to make the world a better place. Foremost amongst this list of billionaire philanthropists is Bill Gates, the tech guru whose Gates Foundation was set up in 2000. The Gates Foundation has now become America's largest philanthropic trust, with an endowment of over $75 billion. However, the growing influence of wealthy philanthropists to secure human development goals is not without contention.

Take, for instance, the case of the Gates Foundation which aims to eradicate poverty, promote good education, develop vaccines, and fight major diseases such as AIDS and malaria. This foundation has made major donations to the Gavi Alliance as well, in a bid to increase access to immunisation in the world's poorest countries. Yet, while Gates has become a powerful voice in addressing serious health issues via his foundation, the way Gates wants to tackle public health concerns has evoked serious criticism.

Gates was called out by many public health advocates for resisting generic production of Covid-19 vaccines, which he felt went against the spirit of intellectual property rights (which had helped Gates amass his own fortune via the Microsoft software patent). Hence, Gates became a powerful supporter for big pharmaceutical companies unwilling to allow generic production of their vaccines, even as patent protections began to severely constrain the ability of poorer nations to immunise their citizens after Covid-19 had become a global pandemic. Gates, and his foundation, did eventually come around to supporting a temporary waiver for production of the Covid-19 vaccine, but this did not happen till a year after this virus had become a pandemic.

Writers like Tim Schwab, and even the Nobel winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, view the Gates Foundation's dedication to upholding intellectual property rights as a disservice to the cause of public health. Many development practitioners are also uncomfortable to see entities like the Gates Foundation exert so much influence on how to address major global concerns such as climate change. The idea of resource-intense industries becoming climate change champions, or even oil rich countries hosting climate summits, for that matter, does seem counter-intuitive. Similarly, Microsoft, the Gates-founded tech giant, claimed it would become carbon negative by 2030, yet it is at the forefront of providing new technologies for oil exploration and increased production. Atlantic magazine recently reported how Microsoft is not only luring oil companies with its new AI capabilities, but also how the data centres owned by Microsoft needed to develop next-generation AI models may use more power than is needed by all of India. Even if alternative energy (solar or nuclear) can meet this energy demand for AI, the AI will still be used to contribute to exploiting more fossil fuels which worsen climate change.

Gates is someone who seems to place full faith in the ability of technology and big businesses to solve major global problems stemming from the inequitable distribution of wealth, and the deprivations caused by this phenomenon. However, Gates is not the only wealthy man who thinks his ideas and generosity can solve major global problems. A growing number of wealthy people are using their riches to gain an undue say concerning human development issues concerning which they have little expertise. Ironically, the affluence enjoyed by the super-wealthy is itself inextricably linked to production and distribution systems which enable accumulation through varied exploitative processes that in turn produce the glaring deprivations evident within both rich and poor countries.

This article is not meant to be a rant against any individual philanthropist. Instead, it intends to point out that no one person should be able to acquire so much wealth and power that they can single-handedly shape global discourses which impact the lives of millions, or even billions, of other people.