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Anti-GMO Voices Don’t Deter Him: 5 Reasons Why Bill Gates Is Optimistic About Africa

Anti-GMO Voices Don’t Deter Him: 5 Reasons Why Bill Gates Is Optimistic About Africa

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates invested $9 billion in Africa over the course of 15 years, and said in 2016 that he plans to spend another $5 billion in the next five years or so.

The world’s richest man according to Forbes, Gates dedicated his first Gates Notes blog of 2017 to his belief that life is getting better for more people, and Africa is proof. “I want to share evidence of this trend from a place where many people wouldn’t expect to find it—Africa,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite places to go for a fresh perspective on how the world is improving. I saw this in-person last year during my trips to South Africa and Ethiopia.”

About 20 other like-minded investors bought into Gates vision for making the world a better place. In December they launched $1 billion fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures to invest in new forms of clean energy, Forbes reported.

The investors include South African mining magnate Patrice Motsepe, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.

Gates addressed the impact of climate change on the continent in July at the 14th annual Nelson Mandela Foundation event in Mamelodi, South Africa. He said it makes him angry that Africa is suffering the worst effects of climate although Africans had almost nothing to do with causing it, ENCA reported.

Although he acknowledged that 2016 was a tough year for many African economies, Gates said in his blog, “almost every trend on the continent has been moving in the right direction over the last decade. Per capita income, foreign investment, agricultural productivity, mobile banking, entrepreneurship, immunization rates, and school enrollment are all heading upwards. Poverty, armed conflicts, HIV, malaria, and child mortality are all on the decline—steeply so in many places.”

Not everyone is happy about how Gates is spending his money in Africa. His funding of GMO research to improve crop yields and reduce famine has been controversial.

“Throughout the world, governments, national health ministries and their populations have been led to believe that there is no reason to critically object to GMOs. American mainstream media, which have now been fully absorbed into the agendas of large multinational corporate chemical and food sponsors, claim GMOs are completely harmless,” according to a report by the Center for Research on Globalization.

Anti-GMO voices don’t deter him. In his words, here are five reasons why Gates said he sees the glass as more than half full in Africa: