Sonala Olumhense
Last week, US philanthropist Bill Gates celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Gates Foundation with a stunning announcement: he will double his charitable giving to $200 billion over the next 20 years.
After giving away “virtually all” of his wealth, he will then shut down the foundation in 2045.
“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote in a blog post. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
Bill Gates founded the Gates Foundation with his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, in 2000, just as Nigeria’s Fourth Republic was getting underway.
Since then, it has given away over $100 billion to help others. He has now chosen to elevate his giving level partly in response to funding cuts by the Donald Trump administration to nonprofits, researchers, universities and the needy.
He clarified: “The United States, United Kingdom, France, and other countries around the world are cutting their aid budgets by tens of billions of dollars. And no philanthropic organisation, even one the size of the Gates Foundation, can make up the gulf in funding that’s emerging right now. It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people.”
Some other foundations are similarly stepping up. John Palfrey, the president of the Chicago-based John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation recently challenged charitable organisations to choose the path of resistance.
He said, “There’s a chance here for us to stand together on a series of very important bedrock principles, and do so with linked arms, and do so in such a way that allows us to serve every community in America in a way that will ensure a strong republic for years to come.”
Writing jointly with Tonya Allen of the McKnight Foundation and Deepak Bhargava of the Freedom Together Foundation, Palfrey warned that charitable organisations could follow Trump’s attacks on the universities.
The MacArthur Foundation is responding by increasing its giving by over 20 per cent for 2025 and 2026.
Like Bill Gates, however, Palfrey is clear that no philanthropic organisation is big enough to fill the emerging funding gulfs.
He said: “I don’t believe that private philanthropy can make up for all of the cuts that are under way in the United States and around the world, for that matter, but I do feel like we can and should do more, and this is what we’re called upon to do in this moment.”
Nigeria, in which MacArthur ran a Big Bet scheme between 2016 and 2024, spending over $150m empowering hundreds of organisations, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of its charity. Its ‘resistance’ philosophy may yet see more funds invested in the country.
The Gates Foundation has been even busier. In September 2023, it announced that it has invested over $2 billion in the last decade in Nigeria.
In 2018, the foundation paid off a $74m loan obtained by Nigeria from Japan to combat polio. That is all different from over $4.8 billion that the Global Fund, in which the Gates Foundation is a major player, has spent in the country since 2002.
Speaking in Abuja in September 2024, Bill Gates himself pointed out that his foundation’s expenditure in healthcare, nutrition, and agriculture is now around $2.8bn.
About two weeks ago, in Abu Dhabi, a group of philanthropies led by the Gates Foundation unveiled a fund of $500 million to help save the lives of newborn babies and mothers in Africa.
In other words, it is likely that some of Bill Gates’ going-away spending will also come to Nigeria.
The question is, what are we going to do differently? Remember how we lost $1bn-per-year in MDGs funds?
“…I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned…to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world.”
“…The foundation will work together with its partners to make as much progress as possible towards three primary goals…to help end preventable deaths of moms and babies and ensure the next generation grows up without having to suffer from deadly infectious diseases.
“The goal would also lift millions of people out of poverty, putting them on a path to prosperity…”
This is an amazing thing for a rich man to propose. Would Nigeria be one of those “principal partners”? The $33m President Goodluck Jonathan promised in 2012 to end maternal mortality in three years never materialised.
Following the rigged election that gave President Muhammadu Buhari a second term in 2019, he personally promised Bill Gates that he would not fail Nigerians. He was lying.
We are simply not honest, diligent people, especially in government. Philanthropy appears to confuse us. From loans to grants, most people are focused on what they can get, not how many they can serve.
Our so-called leaders are unable to grasp why an individual would want to uplift or elevate complete strangers. Because they intend to live forever, they would rather buy all the cars in the showroom and own all the mansions in the city.
But this is the point Bill Gates has made to Nigerian leaders for over two decades: put your people first!
He told the “expanded” National Economic Council meeting to which he was invited in Abuja in April 2019, “By putting the Nigerian people first, Nigeria’s leaders can build a better future, I still believe in the grand vision of Nigeria’s future, and that future depends on all of you.”
He dismissed Buhari’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, “The execution priorities don’t fully reflect people’s needs, prioritising physical capital over human capital. People without roads, ports and factories can’t flourish. And roads, ports and factories without skilled workers to build and manage them can’t sustain an economy.”
Sadly, we have regressed further, under President Bola Tinubu, into a greedy “we’ll be here eating,” in the infamous words of Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
If you seek evidence, look at the opulence and arrogance of the people around Tinubu government, such as Akpabio and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, and the opposing politicians who are falling over each other to defect to the APC.
If you seek evidence, look at the scale of the hundreds of corruption cases being filed, ignored or gamed by the nation’s “anti-corruption” agencies.
Last week, Tinubu, a man with a dubious record, visited Anambra State. His host, Governor Chukwuma Soludo, the famous writer of “History beckons and I will not be silent” (November 2022), from whom the world has waited for Part II for two and a half years. I remember leaving this microphone in his hands.
That Nigeria remains stuck in quicksand reflects this dissonance between what we say and what we do – that crippling hypocrisy our national leadership cannot hide from.
Which of our people would say, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them. There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.
