It's a story they've told dozens of times. When asked how the foundation that bears their name was born, Bill and Melinda Gates always come back in the fall of 1993 and on their engagement trip to Africa. A safari, big predators. On the road, the couple meet women who are looking for water, a malnourished baby in the back and a burden on the head. Faced with misery, they have a revelation. The idea for a foundation was born. Today it is the most powerful charity in the world, with more than $ 46 billion in resources (around € 42 billion).
The coronavirus crisis has revealed its leading role in global health. In two decades, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world behind Jeff Bezos (Amazon), has become an epidemic expert. After injecting $ 250 million and pledging to help produce seven vaccines, the philanthropist struck a blow on April 26. The Covid-19 crisis will now focus the foundation's "total attention", he told the Financial Times. All of its resources, previously used for AIDS, malaria or measles, will now be devoted to the coronavirus and the way out of the economic crisis, which it describes as "the biggest event people will experience in their life ".
This foundation, to which Bill and Melinda Gates, 64 and 55 respectively, devote all their time, is also the story of a personal reconquest. Or how the founder of the Microsoft empire, a business genius who fell into disgrace, donned the costume of benefactor of humanity.
August 1998, the Americans discover amazed the images of William Henry Gates III, said Bill Gates, on television. On the dock, the man sways back and forth and speaks in monosyllables. The one who dared to take the boss of Microsoft to court is none other than the American government. The company is suspected of having placed itself in a monopoly position. His boss, who missed the turning point of the Internet revolution, caught up by pushing his rivals into bankruptcy with blackmail and illegal practices.
“It really marked the American public because it lost face. He fell from his pedestal, ”recalls Lionel Astruc, journalist and author of The Art of False Generosity: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Actes Sud, 2019). "Liar, dangerous", one can read in the press about the man who was, for two decades, the embodiment of innovation and cheek. Because Bill Gates made his fortune with a huge bluff. In 1980, while the IBM company was looking for an operating system to equip the very first personal computer, it won the market when it never manufactured such a system. The PC is revolutionizing our homes and offices and makes Bill Gates, then 25, the youngest billionaire in the world.
The businessman buys a moral
The American justice system finally finds Microsoft guilty of a monopoly, but the company escapes dismantling. "Bill Gates has gone from the peak of economic glory to a period of very harsh humiliation," said Lionel Astruc. Caricatured as a dictator or unscrupulous businessman, he then joined the gallery of characters from villains of American culture.
The promise made during his trip to Africa - to change the world, to help the most underprivileged - will allow him to redeem a reputation and start a new life thanks to his charitable foundation, created in 2000. And this time, he n is not alone at the controls. His wife happily recounts how she and Bill met in 1987.
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READ ALSO> Melinda Gates, "Mrs Philantropy" while in control ...
Melinda French was recently hired as an engineer at Microsoft when the boss offered to go out with him, "Friday evening, in two weeks." "Hello spontaneity! Laughs Mrs. Gates again. For their first romantic weekend, the Texan woman slipped her cute sin into her bag, a 1,800-piece puzzle. “Usually, with my parents, it would take weeks. With Bill, we did it in two days! These two gifted maths have a common passion for organization: anticipating, drawing up lists, they make schedules, statistics for everything. Should we get married? "Bill has drawn up a table with the pros and cons, " said Melinda Gates.
They want to help poor countries ...
This organizational capacity, coupled with the colossal wealth of Microsoft, makes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation a war machine. The businessman spends 95% of his fortune, estimated at 105 billion dollars. Based in Seattle, in the northwest of the United States, not far from Microsoft headquarters, it employs 1,500 people and is named after the two spouses. But parity was difficult to impose. First within the couple. Madame had to get very angry to have the right to write the famous letter of the foundation, review of her activities published each year in the biggest media. Not to mention her first public appearances where Melinda struggles to be heard.
Since then, the couple has developed a well-established show. During their meetings, Bill answers the first two questions, then Melinda speaks. During their travels, she is in empathy - we see her cuddling the children -, while he questions, checks, inspects. He absorbs about fifty books, reports, budgets every week and has a perfect command of his subjects.
The objectives of the foundation are extremely ambitious: to eradicate diseases and help the development of poor countries. It funds thousands of organizations around the world. It is in Africa that it is most involved. In exchange for its generosity, the organization imposes quantified objectives: the beneficiaries are accountable. A method that has made it possible to launch large-scale vaccination campaigns, notably against polio - in thirty years, the number of cases has dropped by 99%. Vaccines against malaria and AIDS are being studied.
Melinda Gates has equipped African women with mobile phones so that they can manage their finances remotely and save themselves from long journeys to the bank. Her husband has invested millions of dollars to design innovative toilets for countries in need of water. To promote his action, the billionaire did not hesitate to pose seated on cabinets!
… And they also finance weapons and GMOs
If the sincerity of the couple is not in doubt, questions arise about the funding and the political positioning of its foundation. In his investigation, the journalist Lionel Astruc reveals, with supporting evidence, that "most of the money is not spent, but managed by a trust, an investment fund which makes it grow in dozens of corporations. In reality, only dividends are used by the foundation. And the trust does not choose just any company. Billions of dollars are invested in the arms industry (the British group BAE Systems), or GMOs (Monsanto).
As early as 2007, Charles Piller, then a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, demonstrated in a resounding article that the foundation was a shareholder in an oil company responsible for dramatic pollution in Nigeria. "Choosing to invest in such companies directly contradicts the noble objectives of the foundation, because they are responsible for the misery that it has set itself the task of combating," summarized the journalist at the time.
This new face of charity action has a name, philanthro-capitalism, which consists in applying market logic to the humanitarian sphere and allows the wealthy to impose their vision. The Gates foundation has thus become a major player in health. More powerful than the World Health Organization, which it finances. "It is no longer a foundation," analyzes Lionel Astruc. They have the power of a state. And the leaders are not mistaken when they receive Bill Gates in the middle of meetings of heads of state. "
And their voice carries. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, the former CEO of Microsoft and his wife have multiplied the stands in the newspapers. The video from his mini-conference (Ted Talk) in 2015 has been viewed 30 million times. He warns governments about the dangers of a pandemic: “We are not ready! These prophetic words have sparked a wave of conspiratorial attacks on social media in recent weeks. Thousands of Internet users accusing the billionaire of "having invented the virus to store his vaccines", or of wanting to "reduce the world population". Not enough to destabilize Bill Gates, who intends to establish the extraordinary influence of a foundation which celebrates this year its twenty years of existence.
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