Poverty will end by 2035, says Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

In Ethiopia income is only $800 a year, but in Botswana it’s $12,000

February 5, 2014 (Desert News) — The poor are getting richer, says Bill Gates, and there’s no reason to believe we can’t end poverty – soon. “By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world,” Gates said in an annual Gates Foundation letter.

He and his wife are struck by how many people seem to believe that the world is getting worse, he writes. “By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been,” writes Gates, citing improvements in health, life expectancy and dramatic turnarounds in cities such as Mexico City and Nairobi.

Traditionally the annual letter focuses on the activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – the largest charitable foundation in the world– but this time the co-chairman and chairwoman seek to debunk “three myths” that are blocking work for the poor: the notion that poor countries are doomed to stay that way, that foreign aid is a waste, and that saving lives will only lead to overpopulation.

To buy into the myths is not just incorrect, he says, it blocks progress for the poor.

The Poor Get Richer

The first and most ingrained myth, writes Gates, is the notion that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

“The easiest way to respond to the myth that poor countries are doomed to stay poor is to point to one fact: They haven’t stayed poor. Many – though by no means all – of the countries we used to call poor now have thriving economies. And the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990.”

In 1987, Mexico City had almost no running water, and people had to trek by bike or foot to fill up jugs. Today, the city is transformed. There are skyscrapers, modern bridges, and new roads. “When I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people here are middle-class. What a miracle,” writes Gates.

But what about Africa? Isn’t it suffering from incurable poverty?

Wrong, says Gates. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa. Parts of Africa still suffer from extreme poverty, but cities like Nairobi have thriving international markets. In Ethiopia income is only $800 a year, but in Botswana it’s $12,000. “You should look skeptically at anyone who treats an entire continent as an undifferentiated mass of poverty and disease,” he writes.

Source: Desert News