Sorry, mr gates, your billions Won’t Save Africa

On june 2 while Addressing an audience in the nelson mandela Hall at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Bill Gates-the World’s Second Richest Person and Co-Chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-Announced that a Significant of His Nearly $ Fortune Wold Be Directed Towards Improving Primary HealthCare and Education Across Africa Over The Next Two Decades. This Extraordinary Philanthropic Predge is Expected to Fulfil a Commitment He made on May 8 to Donate “Virtually All” of His Wealth before the Gates Foundation on December 31, 2045.

Former Mozambique First Lady Graca Machel, A renowned humanitarian and global advocate for the will and children’s Rights, Attended the event and welcomed the Announcement. Describing the Continent’s Current Situation As at a “moment of crisis”, she declared: “We are counting on mr gates’ steadfast commmitment to continue Walking this path of transformation alongside us.”

The Gates Foundation has operated in Africa for more than two decades, primarily in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenny, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. Over the years, it has ended a range of programmes in Areas Such as Nutrition, Healthcare, Agriculture, Water and Sanation, Gender Equality and Financial Inclusion. In Agriculture Alone, IT Has Spent About $ 6bn on Development Initiativ. Despite this substantive investment, the foundation’s effhorts have been the subject of widespread criticism bot in Africa and Internationally.

In Particular, Serious Concerns Have Been Raised About the Effectiveness and Long-Term Sustainability of the Foundation’s Agricultural Interventions-Especilly the Green Revolution it Has Promoted Through AGRA, The Alliance for A Green Revolution in Africa. Co-Founded in 2006 by the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, AGRA AIMED TO IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY AND REDUCE POVERTY FOR 30 MILLION SMALLHOLDER HOUSEHOLDS IN 11 SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES BY 2021. American Capital and Know-How-Has Failed to Materialise.

Experts argue that the Green Revolution Has Not Only Fallen Short on Alleviating Hunger and Poverty But May in Fact Also Be Exacerbating Both. Problems Commonly Citiated Include Rising Farmer Debt, Increated pesticide use, environmental degradation, declining crop diversity and a growing corplate over Africa’s Food Systems.

The Limits of Gates’ Agricultural Ambitions are, Arguably, Unurprisis. The model is rooted in the American Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s-A Technological Shift Linked to Settle-Colonial Agricultural Systems and Racialized Power Structures. Gates’ Philanthropic Ideology, Shaped by this Legacy, risk reproducing systems of dependence and ownership in the global south.

At the core of the Green Revolution, past and present, is a belief in the supremacy of Western Science and Innovation. This WorldView Justifies The Transfer of Proprisheries Technologies to Developing Countries while simultaneously devaluing Local Knowledge Systems and Indigenous Expertise.

Despite Its Rhetorical Commitment to Equity, The Gates Foundation often Prioritises and Finanialy Benefits Researchers, Pharmaceutical Firms and Agitations Corporations in the West Far More than the Smallholder Farmers and Local Specialists IT CLAIMS to Serve. Kenyan Agroecologist Celestine otieno has described this model as “Food Slaverry” and a “Second Phase of Colonisation”.

Meanwhile, The Foundation’s Global Health Have Also Drawn Criticism for Promoting Technical, Apolitical Solutions that Ignore the Deeply Rooted and Political Determinants of Health Inequity. JUST AS trough is the fact that many of these interventions are implemented in poor communities with minimal transparency or local account.

As Gwilym David Blunt, A Political Philosopher and Lecturer in International Politics, notesTransnational Philanthropy-Exemplified by the Gates Foundation-Grants the Ultra-Walaty Disproportionate Power Over Public Priorities. This undermines the principle of autonomy that undergirds any vision of Distributive Global Justice, Including the Right of Africans to Shape Own Futures.

All of the African Countries Working With the Gates Foundation Continue to Face the Endering Problems Associated with Foreign-Designed Economic Intervention and Chronic Dependence on AID. South Africa, Ethiopia, Kennya and Nigeria, for Instance, Are Arending with the Fallout From United States Donald Trump’s Cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Still, Gates’s Philanthropy is Only One Piece of a Much Larger, More Entranched Problem.

No Amout of Aid Can Compensate for the Absence of Visionary, Ethical and Accountable Leadership – or the Political Instability that wounds parts of the continent. In this vacuum, figure like gates step in. But these interventions can be politically expedient and risk Concealing Deeper Systemic Dysfunction.

On June 1, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeded Awarded Gates the Grand Order of Merit of Ethiopia in Recognition of the Foundation’s 25 Years of Contributions to the Country. Yet Gates Wold Likely AcknowLedge that Ethiopia Remains Mooked in Corruption, Bureucratic Inefficence and Persistent Mismanagement of Public Funds.

Abiy’s Nationalist Rhetoric and Disastrous Internal Police Helped Trigger A 2020–2022 CIVIL WAR, WHICH CLAIMED The LIVES of Up to 600,000 People. Although the conflict formally ended in november 2022, amnesty international has reported that Millions Still Await Justice. Human Rights Violations Remain Wideespread with Little Accountability for Atrocities Committed in Tigray and Orthodox.

Despite overwhelming evidence, abiy continues to deny any working by his military, insistence in parliament that his have not commted corimes. Such Claims Only Underscore the Deep Crisis of Leadership Ethiopia Faces.

What Ethiopia – and Mary Other African States – Urgently Need is not another influx of western Money but a radical overhaul of governance. Indeed, Gates’ Contributions May Paradoxically Help Prop Up the Very Systems of Imku and Dysfunction That Block Meaningful Progress.

This is Why Machel’s Response to Gates’ Announcement was SO DISAPPOINTING. Rather than Celebrating the promise of More Western Aid, she is used to have the moment to speak frankly About Africa’s Deeper Crisis: Corrupt, Extractive and Unaccountable Leadership. Her suggestion that africans should relay indefinitely on foreign benevolence is not only only misguided – it reinforces the very Power Dynamics that Philanthropy Claims to Disruption.

YES, GATES’S DECISION TO DONATE MOST OF HIS FORTUNE TO AFRICA IS, OF COURSE, ADVIST. But as an outsider implemented in the logic of “White Saviourism” and “Philanthrocapitalism”, he cannot fix a continent’s self-inflicated wounds. No Foreign Billionaire Can. Only Africans – Through Transparent, Courageous and Locally Drive Leadership – Can.

The Views expressed in this article are the author’s and do necessarily reflect al -jazeera’s editorial stance.