National Geographic, in its latest issue of November 2018, featured a very interesting interview by Susan Goldberg of the philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates. They had started the Goal Keepers Foundation to champion the global goals set by the UN aimed at reducing poverty, inequality, and other global illnesses.
Their 2018 report showed optimism and incredible improvements in the human condition with reduced poverty and increased lives saved and at the same times set goals for the future for the new younger generations. According to Bill Gates:
“Even a very poor country can do a good job on health, can do a good job on agriculture, on education. That provides a lot of hope because you can copy what’s being done there. Rwanda has been a big outlier in the quality of those health services. Ethiopia, on agriculture, is growing over 5 percent a year. In education Vietnam is one we talk about, because they’re so far ahead of where you’d expect given their wealth. But it’s when you get those three things together—health, education, agriculture—that eventually these countries can become self-sufficient …The African continent today is about a billion people out of the some seven billion on Earth. As this century goes forward, over half the young people in the entire world will be there. With those people moving into the job market, if the right investments are made—stability, education, health—Africa will have growth and innovation, far more than lots of other places. If, on the other hand, we don’t take care of the HIV crisis, then you’ll just have more people who will get infected. If you don’t have the right conditions, then the young people, particularly the men, can add to that instability. So Africa definitely hangs in the balance.”
Melinda Gates says this about optimism: “Optimism is important because is a form of seeing what is possible and then helping making that a reality. With the earlier goals that were set (by the UN), we can measure what has happened over the last 20 years, and we see the progress and success that has been made. We can see it in the numbers and we can see it in the report but we also see it with the people on the ground. We see this amazing ingenuity, and if we can tap that as a world – wow will things change!”
Not only billionaires, but anybody can make a difference. Anybody, I mean ANYBODY, from our Walk Around the World and Tukaone Projects, to a school student, a teacher or office worker, anyone can leave an ever lasting legacy and make a meaningful difference in this world.
These are transition times for humanity for developing a more global understanding and greater global consciousness and the well being of our planet. What that means is that even in our own small lives we are part of this planet and live and grow as one humanity made up of different races and countries with their own challenges and strengths that affect us all.
The importance of developing agricultural and economic resources in Africa and other developing regions of the planet cannot be overstated. Walk Around the World and Tukaone Projects are dedicated to doing their part to make the world a better place.
