New York [US], May 9: Bill Gates pledged on Thursday to give away $200 billion via his charitable foundation by 2045 and lashed out at Elon Musk, accusing the world's richest man of "killing the world's poorest children" through huge cuts to the U.S. foreign aid budget.
The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft said he was speeding up his plans to divest almost all of his fortune and would close the foundation on December 31, 2045, years earlier than previously planned.
Gates said he believed the money would help achieve several of his goals, such as eradicating diseases like polio and malaria, ending preventable deaths among women and children, and reducing global poverty.
His announcement follows moves by governments, including the Trump administration, to slash international aid budgets used to prevent deadly disease and famine.
The U.S. cuts have been overseen by Musk, who has publicly bragged about feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development "into the wood chipper," and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Around 80% of USAID programs are set to be cut; the agency spent $44 billion worldwide in fiscal 2023.
"The picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one," Gates told the Financial Times.
In an interview with Reuters, Gates warned of a stark reversal to decades of progress in reducing mortality over the next four to six years due to the funding cuts by governments worldwide.
"The number of deaths will start going up for the first time . it's going to be millions more deaths because of the resources," Gates told Reuters.
The Gates Foundation's annual budget will reach $9 billion by 2026 and around $10 billion annually after that due to the accelerated spending.
Gates has warned the White House that his foundation and other philanthropies cannot fill the gaps left by governments.
"I think governments will come back to caring about children surviving" over the next 20-year period, though, Gates said on Thursday.
Gates and Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, once agreed over the role of the wealthy in giving away money to help others, but have since clashed several times.
Asked if he had appealed to Musk recently to change course, Gates said it was now up to Congress to decide on the future for U.S. aid spending.
"Gates is a huge liar," Musk said in reply to a tweet on his X social media platform that featured an interview with Gates warning about U.S. aid cuts. Musk's spokespeople were not immediately available for comment.
Gates said that despite his foundation's deep pockets, progress would not be possible without government support.
"There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people," Gates wrote in a post on his website. "It's unclear whether the world's richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people."
He praised the response to aid cuts in Africa, where some governments have reallocated budgets, but said that, as an example, polio would not be eradicated without U.S. funding.
Gates made the announcement on the foundation's 25th anniversary.
He set up the organization with his then-wife Melinda French Gates in 2000, and they were later joined by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
