But watch out because “Africa is another order of magnitude”. Syria was a small country, he reminds us, yet its civil war exodus has “challenged the asylum system”. Migration is the other threat to touch Europe’s politics. “The stability of Africa makes a huge difference to the entire world.” Here come the threats: “A pandemic like Ebola can spread very fast,” he warns, and many others spread even faster if there are no local health services to contain them. “We’re talking about uplifting the human condition in a fairly dramatic way.”īut if hope doesn’t beat the new nativism infecting the western world, then fear is Gates’ ammunition of last resort.
“We’re being challenged to explain.” Everyone should know this message of hope. The UK led that effort and saved over 10 million lives.” Do people across the UK know that? He admits a failure to spread the good news. The UK has been very generous to the vaccine fund, for two miraculous vaccines – one for pneumonia, one for diarrhoea.” These sicknesses are now preventable “at extremely low cost to all the children of the world. If Britain needs encouragement, he says, “the data about the impact has been amazing. Look what can be done, he keeps saying, pointing as an example to the brilliant education system in Vietnam, a poor country whose results outstrip far richer ones. “If you are saving lives for a very small amount of money, people should feel good about that,” Gates says emphatically, protesting at current cynicism about international aid organisations. The UK, Sweden and Norway are among the few reaching the UN aid spending target of 0.7% of gross national income, and all feel the cold blast of an anti-foreigner political grudge. Yet it is so: the world has never seen such a rapid rise in prosperity among most of the poor.Įager to encourage western countries to keep giving aid, Gates is well aware that Britain – as elsewhere – suffers frequent political attacks on its aid budget. The upbeat message of Gates – as well as those in his late friend Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness, and Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now – telling us most of the world is on an unprecedented upswing, jars with our reality. Today, the west takes some persuading that things are getting better, especially in Europe where countries like Britain have suffered a decade of falling real living standards and eye-watering austerity. But there is a marked variation in the future trajectory: progress depends on the level of future investment. Look at the indicators on the report’s global scorecard for the UN’s sustainable development goals for 2030, and most things are improving almost everywhere. Take India, where only 18 years ago almost one in five children were not enrolled in primary school – now, 97% attend classes. The foundation’s report bursts with remarkable data – too few people know about the galloping progress of humankind.
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