International
Spotlight
My 2012 Annual Letter
In this guest post, Bill Gates discusses the themes of his annual letter, which looks back on progress made and lessons learned in the fight against extreme poverty. Originally published on Impatient Optimists, blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
My job is to learn about global health and development—and to travel to poor countries to meet farmers who can’t grow enough food, mothers who can’t keep children healthy, and heroes in the field who are doing something about those emergencies. Very few people can devote the time to really understand these complex problems. Even fewer can actually meet the people who are struggling to overcome them. That is why I write an annual letter every year.
I want people to know about the amazing progress we’ve made. I also want them to see how much more progress it will take before we live in a truly equitable world.
In this year’s letter, I focus on food and agriculture (though I also provide updates about all the global health and U.S. education work we do). When I was in high school, a popular book called The Population Bomb painted a nightmarish vision of mass starvation on a planet that has outgrown its carrying capacity. That prediction was wrong, in large part because researchers developed much more productive seeds and other tools that helped poor farmers in many parts of the world multiply their yields. As a result, the percentage of people in extreme poverty has been cut in half in my lifetime. That’s the amazing progress part of the story, and not enough people know it.
But there’s the progress-yet-to-come part, and people need to know that, too. There are still more than 1 billion people who live in extreme poverty. They are located primarily in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and they live on the edge of starvation. There is an irony in this, because most of them are farmers. We can help these 1 billion achieve self-sufficiency, just like we helped billions before them, but we stopped trying. At a certain point, the sense of crisis around food dissipated, and the proportion of foreign aid dedicated to agriculture dropped from one-fifth to less than one-twentieth.
My hope for my annual letter is that it helps people connect to the choice we all have to make. Relatively small investments changed the future for hundreds of millions of small farm families. The choice now is this: Do we continue those investments so that the 1 billion people who remain poor benefit? Or do we tolerate a world in which one in seven people is undernourished, stunted, and in danger of starving to death?
In times of tight budgets, we have to pick our priorities. It’s clear that in this particular time, we’re in danger of deciding that aid to the poorest is not one of them. I am confident, however, that if people understand what their aid has already accomplished—and its potential to accomplish so much more—they’ll insist on doing more, not less. That is why I wrote my letter. I hope you’ll take the time to read it and share it with your friends and family.
I’ve invited students from around the world to write their own annual letters too. You can send your letter, or any questions you have for me, to annualletter@gatesfoundation.org. I’ll be answering and talking about the ideas in your letters in a live webcast on February 2 on my Facebook page.
Bill Gates in Brussels: Living Proof in Action!
“Inspiring!” - “Deeply impressed!” – “Excellent!”
“The greatest speech I’ve heard in my eight years in the European Parliament’s Development Committee!” Gay Mitchell MEP
This week Bill Gates took Brussels by storm – a whirlwind 24 hours of meetings and events with EU leaders, culminated in his Living Proof speech in front of a full house in the European Parliament’s main chamber this afternoon.
The cause of this enthusiasm was a very simple, but effective message – aid works, and especially in these times of crisis, it is critical that the European Union continues its leadership as the world’s second biggest donor. Bill Gates made the case for continued EU investments in vaccines and agriculture and showed how development aid has helped change the world for the better in recent decades.
His visit couldn’t have been timelier. The 27 EU Member States and the European Parliament have recently kicked-off negotiations on a seven-year budget for the EU, of which €57 billion is at stake for future development spending. By showing that the Europe’s generosity has had a real impact on people’s lives in developing countries and by encouraging Parliamentarians to stand up and fight for EU aid in the next seven year budget, Bill Gates has helped strengthen the resolve of existing aid champions and reached out to many that are yet to become supporters of our cause. The new President of the Parliament Martin Schulz wrapped up his first address to the Parliament by reiterating the importance of development spending, “irrespective of political colours, the European Parliament will stand shoulder to shoulder with you”.
Today the EU’s top decision makers were reminded quite how much is at stake in the budgets they are responsible for. The ONE team, working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will make sure words are matched by action in the difficult negotiations to come!
Watch what he had to say:
For Bill Gates’ joint video statement with European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs, please click here.
Mo Farah’s next big challenge
Mo Farah’s list of accolades is jaw dropping. Since arriving in the UK from war torn Somalia at the age of 8 he has risen through the ranks to become arguably the greatest long-distance runner in the history of UK athletics. He is currently 5,000m world champion, 10,000m silver medallist and one of the favourites for the pinnacle of athletics success at this summer’s Olympic games in London. He also holds a number of British and European records over those two distances. I’m exhausted just writing about it!
Mo can now add founding the Mo Farah Foundation to his impressive list of achievements. As a Somali native, Mo regularly visits family in the Horn of Africa and is all too aware of the problems that many in the region faces today. As such, his foundation is working to raise funds to provide essential lifelines to those suffering from malnutrition and starvation. In the longer term, they aim to provide and maintain community water wells, crop seeds for agricultural farming and the tools to sustain this essential way of life. Mo’s links to the country mean that this is an issue very close to his heart:
“As someone born in Somalia this is something that is very important to me. I’ve seen the situation out there and I want to help make a difference. There are kids out there right now who are starving and I want the foundation to be able to help them get over this and plan for the future. That’s why the work of organisations like ONE, which campaigns for better funding for solutions to the problems that lead to famine, is so important.”
This long term work is crucial for the development of the region and the importance of the work of groups like Mo’s Foundation cannot be underestimated. Most food crises are preventable and investments in agriculture can actually help people become more resilient to shocks such as drought. Other types of investments in rural roads, proper storage facilities, and access to improved seed varieties can also build tolerance to drought, save grains from previous seasons and help communities access food when drought strikes. But it is not just up to private foundations to tackle the problem. Government’s around the world need to improve their funding of long-term agricultural solutions for drought-stricken regions like the Horn of Africa.
In 2009, the G8 pledged $22 billion for agricultural development in developing countries and committed to principles to guide the quality, effectiveness, and accountability of their aid. Some countries have clarified their commitments, outlining how much is new money and constructing plans that will ensure that the principles are upheld. However our recent report “Agricultural Accountability” revealed that G8 and G20 countries had only delivered on a fifth of the promised amount. This is unacceptable. We need governments to step up and work with partners like the Mo Farah Foundation to ensure that the world doesn’t slide back into another food crisis and, instead, find successful solutions to help ensure that droughts do not inevitably to famine.
To find out more, please visit www.mofarahfoundation.co.uk
2011: A Year of Progress
As the end of 2011 fast approaches everything is winding down here at ONE. At this time of reflection, we wanted to take the opportunity to look back at 2011 and what we, but much more importantly YOU, have achieved in the fight against extreme poverty.
All the way back in January French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to lead the way in making oil, gas and mining companies operating in Africa more transparent in their financial reporting, and UK Chancellor George Osborne soon followed. Determined to make transparency a reality – you took action. 10,000 of you signed our petition and we delivered an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron on behalf of over 200 Ugandan civil society activists.
Fast forward to October and the campaign was given a HUGE boost by European Commission proposals for a new law guaranteeing all company payments to governments will be published. This is a big step forward – and YOU helped make it happen! Keep your eyes peeled for further developments in 2012 when we’ll be pushing to turn the proposals into legislation…
2011 has been the year for championing aid effectiveness and transparency. ONE launched a campaign to Make Aid Transparent, with our friends at Publish What You Fund In November, we presented your petition to governments meeting in South Korea demanding that they publish the details of the aid money they spend. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s keynote address at the forum in Busan, announced that the United States would be signing the International Aid Transparency Initiative – a fantastic result that YOU helped us achieve.
One of our biggest successes came in June when ONE members took action on the crucial issue of childhood vaccines.
More than 300,000 of you signed our petition. ONE members also sent hundreds of letters to members of parliament in the UK, and in the USA we swamped the Whitehouse with tweets. In South America ONE volunteers recruited thousands of new members who added to the weight of our international voice. In Australia ONE members called and emailed the foreign minister’s office, and in Germany the outstanding youth messengers were hard at work gathering support.
Because of your skill at advocacy, your hard work and a ton of determination, it worked. World leaders promised to commit $4.3 billion to vaccinate some of the world’s most vulnerable children against deadly diseases – saving an estimated 4 million lives in the next 5 years.
ONE members in the UK have been getting involved in another exciting project for us this year – our first UK student activist programme! Students & ONE for Africa Rising (SOAR) launched with two very successful training weekends in London and Leeds, and has already seen students promoting ONE’s World Aid’s Day campaign at their universities and recruiting other students to get in involved too. Keep SOARing, guys.
This has been an exciting year for progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS as momentum grows for ‘The Beginning of the End of AIDS’. Back in February over 250,000 of you signed our petition calling for ‘No Child Born with HIV by 2015’ which were delivered to world leaders You were heard. In November Hillary Clinton incredibly announced that welcoming in the first AIDS-free generation is now a policy priority of the US government for the first time in history!
Progress can and IS happening. On 1 December ONE and our sister organization (RED) hosted an inspirational World AIDS Day event in Washington to highlight the progress that has been made in the last 10 years in the fight against global AIDS. ONE members have been joining the fight in droves, getting creative and making panels for ONE and (RED)’s (2015)QUILT, a ground breaking digital tool that brings people from all over the world together to fight for an historic achievement – the beginning of the end of AIDS.
It is impossible to look back on 2011 without considering the situation in the Horn of Africa, where in just 3 months 30,000 children died. October saw the launch of our The F Word: Famine is the real obscenity video and our Hungry No More campaign. In total 409,000 people signed our petition urging G20 leaders to act. In the UK ONE members tweeted, emailed or met with MPs and ONE members in France joined our Paris team to project our campaign videos and a list of petition signers’ names onto the face of the historic Hôtel de Ville. There is still much to be done but you ARE being listened to. The G20 agreed that there is an urgent need to strengthen emergency and long-term responses to food insecurity and that responsible investment in long-term agricultural solutions in the poorest countries is essential.
This is just some of the things we at ONE and our fantastic members have been up to. We have also had Youth Messengers championing the cause in Germany, volunteers all over Europe recruiting at Maroon 5 shows, and have been presenting Living Proof to celebrate the incredible progress being achieved by some of the world’s poorest people.
There is still much to be done in the fight against extreme poverty, and it is often an uphill battle. But with inspirational people doing inspirational things like this, we at ONE believe with your help we can do it.
Bring on 2012!
2011 ONE Africa Award Winner Announced
I’m delighted to announce that Groupe de Reflexion et d’action, Femme Democratie et Developpment (GF2D), from Togo are the 2011 winners of the fourth annual ONE Africa Award.
The ONE Africa Award celebrates and bolsters innovative Africa-led, Africa-driven advocacy efforts to help advance one or more of the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s blueprint to fighting extreme poverty and disease. The goals specifically address critical issues to development, such as; halving extreme poverty; halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria and providing universal primary education.
GF2D helps women in exercising their right to participate in decision making processes of their country.
One of GF2D’s tools is the use of paralegals who are trained in Togolese laws by GF2D and empowered to communicate messages to communities about women’s rights, engage in mediations related to marriage, inheritance and children, and offer referral assistance for issues that need to be handled in court. Many of their paralegals are everyday women – traders, seamstresses, mothers, whose lives have been changed because of their paralegal training and some of them have gone on to seek local political positions. These women and men have become well-respected members of their societies because of their knowledge of Togolese laws and their ability to convey the rights of women to their peers in simple messages. GF2D has been integral to the increase in the number of female political office holders in Togo today.
As winners of this year’s ONE Africa Award GF2D receive $100000 in prize money.
As the award was announcement here in Johansburg, Léontine, GF2D’s General Secretary said:
“We dedicate the 2011 ONE Award to all Togolese women whose bravery and dynamism are well known. We want to recognize the silent majority of those who suffer from violence, discrimination and low incomes gained from their hard efforts. The announcement of the award was greeted with a great joy at the “House of women” by all the members and staff of GF2D.
This award represents the recognition for over 20 years of efforts to realize a vision where: women know their rights and fully benefit from them:
- Togolese women, freed from the constraints and socio-cultural burdens imosed on them, contribute to the development of their society
- equal participation of men and women exists in the political, social and economic decision making processes
- a genuine partnership exists between men and women in the management of their families, public and private institutions
We receive this award as an encouragement to persevere in defending the cause of women. We thank ONE whose mission is to recognize, reward and support the important work of African civil society organizations towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). “
The runners up of the award this year in no particular order include: Prévention Information et Lutte contre le Sida (PILS) – Mauritius, Africa Youth Trust (AYT) – Kenya, Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) – Ghana and Sylva Food Solutions Limited (SFSL) – Zambia
Previous award winners include Nigeria’s Development Communications Network (Devcoms) and Kenya’s Slums Information Development and Resources Centres (SIDAREC) and SEND West Africa.
We are here today to celebrate Africa’s unsung heroes and to play our part on changing the stereotype narrative on Africa. We don’t deny that there are challenges that exist, but, we also need to highlight the successes, the determination and the ingenuous creativity of the African people despite these challenges.
I’m sure you will join me in congratulating GF2D and our runners ups, and thanking them for the amazing work they are doing across the continent. We wish them every success in the future!
Success – down to you
I’m really pleased to share some good news: you’ve contributed to another successful campaign! Thanks to pressure from you and 65,000 others who signed our transparency petition, governments have taken a giant step forward toward making sure aid money has the greatest possible impact on reducing poverty. This means that in poor countries around the world aid spending will help more lives be saved, more kids get the chance to go to school, and more families lift themselves out of grinding poverty.
Together with our friends at Publish What You Fund, ONE presented a petition to governments meeting in South Korea last week demanding that they publish the details of the aid money they donate. And the pressure worked. Many donor governments and institutions published information about their aid spending while others, including the world’s largest donor, the United States, signed up to an international agreement committing to do so.
ONE’s Alan Hudson and Sara Messer present the Make Aid Transparent petition to UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell, along with Karin Christiansen of Publish What You Fund and other partners.
This is a vital development. Aid donors will be able to coordinate with each other, reducing waste and overlap. Developing country governments and organisations delivering projects on the ground will be able to plan better, because they will know how much money they are receiving, for what projects and for how long. What’s more, citizens in these countries will be able to hold their governments to account because they will know what results the government is supposed to be achieving with the money it receives.
We already know that aid, when spent properly, delivers amazing results. For example, over the last decade, 46.5 million more African children have been able to go to school, and the number of people receiving life-saving treatment for AIDS grew from 100,000 to 6.6 million. Thanks to pressure from you the agreements made last week now mean that aid money has the potential to deliver even greater results over the coming years.
Live stream of ONE & (RED)’s World AIDS Day event
Today at 3pm GMT, ONE and (RED) are hosting an incredible World AIDS Day to highlight the progress that has been made in the last 10 years in the fight against global AIDS. US President Obama, ONE cofounder Bono, former US Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Alicia Keys and others will be in attendance. The event will be moderated by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. They’ll also be taking questions from ONE members, so be sure to stay tuned for the Q&A session at the end.
Watch the event in the player below, or go to our YouTube channel to watch it. We’ll be live-tweeting the event on our Twitter account, @ONECampaign, using the hashtag #endofAIDS.
Don’t feed the vultures
Campaigners like you have fought against the unfair debts that crippled some of the world’s poorest countries. We rightly celebrated when debt relief helped lift some of this burden.
Now that progress is under threat.
Vulture funds make money by buying up old debt against developing countries, and using the courts to sue them for it in order to reap massive profits. That’s just wrong.
The problem is, that while the vulture funds law brought in the UK last year finally stopped this activity happening here, this doesn’t currently extend to Jersey.
Sign up now to ask the Chief Minister of Jersey to extend the UK law to their courts too.
Right now, vulture fund FG Hemisphere is using Jersey’s courts to claim $100m from the Democratic Republic of Congo, on a debt thought to have been bought for $3.3m.
After having much of their debt cancelled by the IMF and World Bank just last year, the impact that this will have on the DRC, and people living in extreme poverty, is just unimaginable. This shouldn’t be happening – let alone so close to home.
Join ONE and the Jubilee Debt Campaign UK in asking Jersey’s Chief Minister to take a stand, by extending the law that already exists here in the UK. It’s simply not right to turn a blind eye.
Thanks for your support on this, and please ask your friends to sign up too.
Better Aid
International aid cannot solve all our problems, but it can make a real difference. It can save lives, put children into school, and reduce extreme poverty. But at the moment we don’t have a full picture of how much money is being spent, where, or on what.
At the organization I work for in East Africa, Twaweza, we help people get information to get things done and hold their governments to account. We’ve seen real progress as better informed people ask questions, discuss ideas, and make sure officials do their job.
If information on aid was openly available, citizens would be able to see where and how it is spent, which would help them track the money and demand results. Real transparency means aid money can go even further and also reduces the risk of corruption.
Please join me in signing ONE’s petition now.
We are at a critical moment. Governments are meeting later this month in South Korea to discuss this issue and we have the chance to hold them to account. Public pressure right now can make a huge difference to the future of aid.
Twaweza means “we can make it happen” in Swahili. Together, we sure can!
Rakesh Rajani is Head of Twaweza and a member of ONE’s Africa Policy Advisory Board
How your support made a difference at the G20
Last week, I was in Cannes at the G20 summit. As you know, media coverage of the meeting was full of the eurozone and Greece, and you might be forgiven for thinking that’s all they discussed. But behind the headlines, something else really important happened. G20 leaders heard your voice, and the voices of more than 400,000 others who backed our Hungry No More campaign.
What’s more, they committed themselves to a number of the short and long-term agricultural solutions we’ve been pushing for to break the cycle of famine. With over 13 million people still in crisis in the Horn of Africa, I wanted to let you know what the G20 have pledged, how you helped achieve this, and what we need to do next.
In their final declaration, the G20 agreed that there is an urgent need to strengthen emergency and long-term responses to food insecurity and that responsible investment in long-term agricultural solutions in the poorest countries is “essential to promote food security and foster sustainable economic growth,” especially when focused on smallholder farmers.
They also pledged to reduce the dangerous impacts of food price volatility and improve the transparency of agricultural commodity markets. That could make a world of difference. Some of the poorest families have to spend as much as 80% of their household budgets on food, so sudden price rises mean real hardship.
More good news is that President Calderon of Mexico – the next Chair of the G20 – announced in Cannes that food security will be one of the G20’s major priorities in 2012. The G20 has made a good start on a framework to fight poverty through agriculture, and now is the time for countries to step up and turn it into reality.
As a ONE member, you are one of our strongest advocates, and we owe you a big thank you. This campaign was just 30 days long, and here’s a snapshot of what you helped achieve globally:
- 409,000 people signed our petition urging G20 leaders to act, and more than 700,000 viewed our ‘F-word’ TV ad on YouTube
- In just one week in the UK, nearly 500 members searched for their Member of Parliament using our new toolkit, leading to a burst of tweets, personalised emails and meetings with MPs. A few members also represented ONE at Downing Street, and handed in our petition
- ONE members in France joined our Paris team to project our campaign videos and a list of petition signers’ names onto the face of the historic Hôtel de Ville
- In Germany, members’ tweets provoked a response from a Government spokesperson assuring that they considered agriculture, food prices and food security important at the G20
- ONE members in the US handed in our petition on Capitol Hill, taking our message right to the heart of the US government.
But this isn’t the end of our Hungry No More campaign. Although we saw progress, the G20 still have a long way to go to make sure these promises are more than just warm words. We didn’t hear enough urgency or commitment to implementation, and the focus could too easily move away from this crucial issue.
Our job is to stop that from happening, and keep up the pressure. So when the smaller G8 meet in Chicago next year, and when the G20 gather again in Mexico, we will need your support to push for concrete results that make world leaders accountable to their commitments.
We’ll be in touch to let you know how you can help, but for now I simply wanted to say: thank you.
Together as ONE, we are making a difference.
PS. If you haven’t seen our Tigray: Then and Now documentary, then please do take a look and share. This is what your support is helping work towards.
- Previous Posts Older Entries
- Next Posts
 |
 |
 |
About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Health, Partners, Spotlight