DAKAR
THE JANICKI OMNI PROCESSOR, a $2m machine paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, turns human waste into water and electricity. In poor cities such as Dakar in Senegal, where it has been piloted, the hope is that people will send sewage to sanitation plants to be processed, rather than chucking it into the streets.
Your browser does not support the <audio> element.
Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.
The Omni Processor exemplifies the Gates Foundation’s approach to philanthropy. Mr Gates likes to apply business principles to doing good, which means focusing on innovative, often technological, solutions with quantifiable results. The processor’s inputs and outputs can be counted. The first version, which arrived in Senegal in 2015, was not designed to deal with sewage filled with sand and rocks as it is in Dakar. It was made of materials that corroded quickly in the city’s sea air. These glitches have been fixed in the “OP 2.0”, which arrived in Dakar this year.
Mr Gates has championed the foundation’s data-driven style of philanthropy. But his ex-wife, now known as Melinda French Gates, is thought to have tempered his relentless focus on efficiency, arguing that number-crunching methods cannot resolve the complex causes of poverty on their own. That difference in emphasis, in turn, raises questions about whether the couple’s divorce, announced this year, will set the world’s most powerful charitable foundation on a novel course.
The foundation’s influence is immense. Its $50bn endowment comes from contributions from Mr Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, Ms French Gates and Warren Buffett, a billionaire investor and friend. In 2019 it gave out $4.1bn, according to the OECD, a club of rich countries, more than 11 times as much as the next-largest private American development foundation. If it were a government, it would be the 12th-biggest disburser of foreign aid, between Italy and Switzerland (see chart 1).
The Gates foundation is the second-biggest donor to the World Health Organisation, behind only the American government. It is a founding member of Gavi, a public-private partnership that provides vaccination programmes in poor countries. It has committed more than $1.8bn to fighting covid-19.
It is not the first to embrace a businesslike approach to charitable giving. In 1889 Andrew Carnegie, a steel magnate, wrote in “The Gospel of Wealth”: “One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.” He cautioned against giving people money without scrutinising how they spent it. He and other industrialists such as Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller set up large foundations with big boards to give away their money, mostly late in life.
In recent decades the centre of gravity for American philanthropy has shifted from the east coast to the west. Rich tech founders are giving away their wealth while young and taking a keen interest in how it is spent. Many take their cues from the Gates Foundation in terms of which causes to support and how to do so, says Nick Tedesco, a former Gates employee who is now head of the National Centre for Family Philanthropy in Washington, DC. “The influence of the Gates Foundation”, he says, “is outsized.”
Established in 2000, the foundation employs 1,750 people, mostly in Seattle. Mr Gates, who stepped down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft in 2008, takes a hands-on approach to its work. He and Ms French Gates pick causes on which they believe they can have the most impact, from improving education in America to eradicating diseases such as polio and malaria. They hire academics, former management consultants and mandarins to dish out grants, often referred to as “investments”. The return on grants is measured precisely. A malaria project might be judged on bed-nets distributed; one on education might track attendance rates or test scores. Unsuccessful ventures are dropped.
Not all rich benefactors operate in this way. Some simply give vast sums of money to charities they like, leaving them to spend it as they wish. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has announced over $8bn in donations since July 2020 in an approach she calls “seeding by ceding”. She has hired Bridgespan Group, a consultancy, to help her pick grantees. Her gifts come without prescriptions or demands for reports on progress.
The Gates Foundation promotes data-driven, tech-based fixes for discrete problems. Mr Gates’s first charitable effort was to buy computers for libraries in poor parts of America and connect them to the internet. His work in health initially focused on technological solutions, like vaccines, for particular infectious diseases.
In other areas, however, that hyper-efficient, outcomes-oriented approach gets you only so far. Counting vaccines is easy; putting a number on a woman’s freedom is not. Mr Gates and Ms French Gates expected global health to be the trickiest part of their portfolio, says Patrick Methvin, who works on education in America for the Gates Foundation. But they found that education projects were more complicated, in part because evaluating what children have learnt—and what they should learn—is far from straightforward. “Education is fundamentally a social-values-based enterprise,” Mr Methvin says.
As Adam Moe Fejerskov, author of “The Gates Foundation’s Rise to Power”, puts it: “Quantification is really about reducing the messiness of the world to formulae and numbers.” The trickiest problems cannot be solved by technology and numbers alone. When the first Omni Processor arrived in Dakar, almost a third of the city’s 3m inhabitants did not live in homes connected to sewers. Public understanding of sanitation is limited. Shortly after the machine appeared, rumours that water extracted from sewage was being added to the city’s drinking water caused uproar. Speak Up Africa, a Gates-funded policy-and-advocacy group, was called on to launch a public-information campaign.
The point of evaluating projects is to steer money away from those that do not work. The foundation says that it does so slowly, winding programmes down gradually. But this trial-and-error method can cause problems.
Early on, the foundation backed the small schools movement in America which suggested that students learn better in small groups getting more individual attention. But running extra-curricular activities and programmes for pupils who needed help with English or special needs was difficult with a smaller student body. With fewer teachers, small schools had to limit their curriculums. The foundation honoured existing grants but channelled new funds into other education reforms. Schools were left struggling for cash and children faced unnecessary upheaval. “We fell short,” Mr Gates wrote in 2009.
For grantees, the level of monitoring and evaluation marks a big difference between the Gates Foundation and other donors. Programme officers oversee their work. That can be helpful. At Speak Up Africa, which has been awarded some $33m in multiple grants since 2015, the team says its monthly virtual meetings with Gates staff in Seattle offer a chance to discuss new ideas and meet international experts.
But the administrative burden can be overwhelming for small groups unused to working with a demanding, global foundation. Askaan Santé, a non-profit organisation in Dakar focused on public health with a staff of 13, received $900,000 in funding after its founder, Fatou Fall Ndoye, met a Gates staffer at a conference. The foundation helped her craft her proposal. But the application took eight months. “It’s a long process,” Ms Ndoye says.
This explains in part why the foundation tends to fund organisations based in the rich world rather than those in developing countries where the money is needed most. An analysis of the foundation’s grants database by The Economist and David McCoy, a professor of global public health at Queen Mary University of London, suggests that grantees with headquarters in Africa and Asia have received just 5.3% and 5.6% of its grants respectively since 1999, though their share has risen (see chart 2).
There are many reasons for this asymmetry. Grantees based in America or Europe often have branches in poorer countries and pass funding on to sub-grantees elsewhere. Fewer people are doing cutting-edge research in sub-Saharan Africa. But it is also difficult for a small organisation in the poor world to get the attention of a Gates staffer. And the paperwork can be intimidating. Those that manage to win Gates funding often know someone at the foundation or have worked at an organisation backed by the foundation and so understand the process. Ms Ndoye had both.
Initially the thought was that the foundation would use its resources for innovation to come up with “breakthroughs”, and leave it to others to ensure they reached the right people, says Mark Suzman, its chief executive. “The wake-up call which hits a lot of people who come into philanthropy is that that doesn’t necessarily work.”
Instead the foundation is now focusing on making sure that its innovations work in the real world. This involves messy social changes that are difficult to track. It has invested $4bn in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, including vaccines. But in Nigeria, the only African country where the disease remained endemic, it has also mapped villages in the conflict-ridden north which were missed in immunisation campaigns. The continent was declared free of wild polio last year.
In family planning the foundation is not simply distributing cheap contraceptives. Women in a low-income country, like India, might not feel comfortable going to a clinic to get condoms or a pill. The Gates-backed Centre for Social and Behaviour Change at Ashoka University near New Delhi tries to understand these social dynamics. It is supporting groups that help women build their confidence in such matters. Confidence is hard to quantify.
The unmeasurable side to philanthropy has drawn on the temperament and insights of Ms French Gates. Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, a British medical journal, says she takes a “more holistic approach” to development, encompassing women’s rights and the capacity of health systems. “She humanised the foundation in a remarkable way,” he continues. Chris Eide, who founded Teachers United, an American advocacy group that received a Gates grant in 2011, describes two separate meetings with the pair. Ms French Gates, he says, asked him to bring a group of teachers and asked “open and earnest questions” about their work. Mr Gates met him one-on-one and grilled him on education policy. “The way he took notes from our conversation, it was almost like he was building a machine,” says Mr Eide.
The question now is whether Ms French Gates’s influence will outlast the pair’s divorce. If in two years they no longer want to work together, she will resign as a trustee and receive a payout from him to continue her philanthropic work elsewhere. That would require the foundation to find a new way to get the most out of Mr Gates’s data-driven method. ■
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Shifting foundations"
A daily email with the best of our journalism
Oppressing women not only hurts women; it also hurts men
Twenty years after 9/11 in Economist covers
Covid and the internet are fuelling a global boom in bonkers beliefs
Oppressing women not only hurts women; it also hurts men
Twenty years after 9/11 in Economist covers
Covid and the internet are fuelling a global boom in bonkers beliefs
Getting surplus vaccines urgently to poorer places could save more than 1m lives
That means gains for some people, but losses for more
Published since September 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.”
Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2021. All rights reserved.
generic cialis tadalafil cialis cost
tadalafil tadalafil online with out prescription
cost of cialis https://nextadalafil.com/
https://cialiswbtc.com/ cost of cialis
tadalafil cost in canada tadalafil side effects
cost tadalafil generic buy tadalis
https://cialisvet.com/ tadalafil cost walmart
where to buy tadalafil on line buy tadalis
cheapest tadalafil cost buy cialis
buy cialis https://cialisbusd.com/
tadalafil price walmart tadalafil online with out prescription
where to buy cialis without prescription tadalafil drug
https://cialismat.com/ tadalafil cost in canada
tadalafil without a doctor prescription tadalafil order online no prescription
cialis cost what is tadalafil
cialis cost tadalafil daily online
tadalafil canada generic tadalafil
cialis without prescription where to get tadalafil
where to get tadalafil tadalafil liquid
tadalafil cialis what is tadalafil
tadalafil blood pressure cialis cost
generic tadalafil from uk where to buy generic cialis online safely
cheap generic cialis for sale tadalafil drug
prescription tadalafil online tadalafil price walmart
tadalafil blood pressure where to order tadalafil tablets
side effects for tadalafil lowest price cialis
cheap generic cialis for sale https://cialiswbtc.com/
side effects of tadalafil generic cialis tadalafil
tadalafil goodrx tadalafil blood pressure
cost of cialis tadalafil brands
generic cialis online fast shipping tadalafil dosage
generic tadalafil from uk best price usa tadalafil
where to get tadalafil https://cialisicp.com/
tadalafil 20 mg canada tadalafil generic
tadalafil cialis https://cialisbusd.com/
sildenafil sale what is sildenafil citrate tablets
ivermectin canada ivermectin 12
tadalafil online https://cialisvet.com/
tadalafil liquid tadalafil tab
viagra tablet purplepill.com
tadalafil evolution peptides tadalafil no prescription
sildenafil not working sildenafil 100mg for sale
cialis cost tadalafil
ivermectin 0.08% cost of ivermectin medicine
ivermectin 3mg pill generic ivermectin
stromectol covid ivermectin 3 mg tabs
stromectol pills ivermectin 0.5 lotion
ivermectin virus ivermectin 400 mg brands
order stromectol ivermectin stromectol
ivermectin cream canada cost ivermectin 1%cream
stromectol medicine ivermectin 24 mg
ivermectin cost uk ivermectin 400 mg
stromectol 3 mg tablet ivermectin stromectol
cheapest viagra online viagra
tadalafil from canada is tadalafil and cialis the same thing?
tadalafil 30mg liquid cialis vs tadalafil
what are the side effects of sildenafil tablets maximum dose of sildenafil
sildenafil uses in females where can i buy sildenafil online safely
cheap genieric cialis how much does cialis cost
silk road online pharmacy cvs pharmacy careers apply online
my canadian pharmacy rx reviews canadian pharmacy tampa
buy levitra from india levitra originale
pharmacy drugstore online safe online pharmacies in canada
generic tadalafil 2018 tadalafil cheap
ivermectin tablets amazon ivermectin argentina
cialis without prescription cialis online without
sildenafil rx viagra online generic
Antabuse my canadian pharmacy reviews
ivermectin cvs what is ivermectin 3 mg used for
cialis tadalafil 20 mg cialis price cvs
cialis levitra viagra sample pack levitra when to take
cost of female viagra home page home page
sumatriptan canada pharmacy pharmacy tech canada
levitra generico 20 mg is levitra better than cialis
purchase cialis in canada natural alternative to cialis
prescription drugs without prior prescription canadian pharmacy accutane
Elavil internet pharmacy manitoba
how to buy prescription drugs from canada cvs pharmacy store near me
online pharmacy tech Amoxil
walmart pharmacy online prescription refill canadian pharmacies online legitimate
Ventolin inhalator get prescription online
rx universal drugstore
reputable canadian mail order pharmacies weis pharmacy
cost modafinil order modafinil 200mg without prescription buy modafinil 200mg without prescription
modafinil 100mg without prescription modafinil brand order modafinil 200mg for sale
purchase modafinil generic provigil order
erythromycin gastroparesis
order provigil 200mg pill buy modafinil 100mg generic
reliable canadian online pharmacy canadian pharmacy for cialis
purchase modafinil online modafinil ca provigil cheap
provigil 200mg tablet order provigil 100mg online
order provigil 100mg generic
erythromycin drops erythromycin overdose
Cialis Vs Viagra Vs Levitra How Hard?
https://erythromycin1m.com/# erythromycin wiki
how Long Does Cialis Take Effect?
buy modafinil sale
what Is Cialis Black?
erythromycin topical gel
modafinil 100mg pill order provigil 200mg online order provigil 200mg for sale
how to apply erythromycin ophthalmic ointment http://erythromycin1m.com/#
how Does Cialis Work Best?
erythromycin fish
generic provigil 200mg cost provigil 200mg modafinil sale
what Is The Difference Between Viagra, Cialis And Levitra?
erythromycin dosage erythromycin ointment
buy hydroxychloroquine online https://www.hydroxychloroquinex.com/
stromectol pills https://www.ivermectinoge.com/
hydroxychloroquine for sale from canada plaquenil indications
stromectol 12mg online cheap stromectol buy ivermectin online
Pingback: 1terrier
buy hydroxychloroquine usa does hydroxychloroquine require a prescription
purchase stromectol online generic ivermectin 12 mg generic stromectol 12mg
http://hydroxychloroquinex.com/ hydroxychloroquine generic names
ivermectin from canada stromectol 12
buy stromectol 12mg
online pharmacy stromectol cheap stromectol generic ivermectin 6 mg
clearwater slots
double diamond slots free
free online penny slots
stromectol canadian pharmacy stromectol 12mg online
viagra cialis
online casino free spins
sign up bonus no deposit
bonus online casino
avast secureline vpn
best vpn australia
buy vpn india
free no deposit casino
online casino games for real money
mobile online casinos
how to set up vpn
secure vpn service
best google chrome vpn
pharmacy online canada
how to get a vpn
best free vpn for chromebook
best vpn for dark web
buy residential vpn
vpn for firefox
free vpn ios
best vpn for firestick
free vpn for mac
globus free vpn
best casino online usa
betonline casino
casino games for real money
best us online casinos
free bonus casino
online casino games real money
atlas vpn free
pia vpn download
100% free vpn
online casino signup bonus no deposit
no deposit casino games
no deposit casino bonuses
best vpn for school
vpn chrome extension free
vpn unlimited
best casino bonus
mobile casinos
more casino games