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2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
page one
Tis is my second annual letter.
Te ocus o this year’s letter is innovation and how it canmake the dierence between a bleak uture and a bright one.2009 was the rst year my ull-time work was as co-chair o the oundation, along with Melinda and my dad. It’sbeen an incredible year and I enjoyed having lots o time to meet with the innovators working on some o the world’smost important problems. I got to go out and talk with people making progress in the eld, ranging rom teachers inNorth Carolina to health workers ghting polio in India to dairy armers in Kenya. Seeing the work rsthand remindsme o how urgent the needs are as well as how challenging it is to get all the right pieces to come together. I love my new job and eel lucky to get to ocus my time on these problems.Te global recession hit hard in 2009 and is a huge setback. Te neediest suer the most in a downturn. 2009 startedwith no one knowing how long the nancial crisis would last and how damaging its eects would be. Looking backnow, we can say that the market hit a bottom in March and that in the second hal o the year the economy stoppedshrinking and started to grow again. I talked to Warren Buett, our co-trustee, more than ever this year to try tounderstand what was going on in the economy.Although the acute nancial crisis is over, the economy is still weak, and the world will spend a lot o years undoingthe damage, which includes lingering unemployment and huge government decits and debts at record levels. Laterin the letter I’ll talk more about the eects o these decits on governments’ oreign aid budgets. Despite the tougheconomy, I am still very optimistic about the progress we can make in the years ahead. A combination o scienticinnovations and great leaders who are working on behal o the world’s poorest people will continue to improve thehuman condition.One particular highlight rom the year came last summer, when I traveled to India to learn about innovativeprograms they have recently added to their health system. Te health statistics rom northern India are terrible—nearly 10 percent o children there die beore the age o 5. In response, the Indian government is committed to increasing itsocus and spending on health. On the trip I got to talk to Nitish Kumar, the chie minister o Bihar, one o the pooreststates in India, and hear about some great work he is doing to improve vaccination rates. I also got to meet with RahulGandhi, who is part o a new generation o political leaders ocused on making sure these investments are well spent.Te oundation is considering unding measurement systems to help improve these programs. Rahul was very rankin saying that right now a lot o the money is not getting to the intended recipients and that it won’t be easy to x. Hisopenness was rereshing, since many politicians won’t say anything that might discourage a donor rom giving more.He explained how organizing local groups, primarily o women, and making sure they watch over the spending is onetactic he has seen make a big dierence. Te long-term commitment to measuring results and improving the delivery systems that I heard rom him and other young politicians assured me that health in India will improve substantially in the decade ahead.
From let: Visiting a smallholder dairy arm in Kabiyet (Rit Valley Province, Kenya, 2009); Indian politician Rahul Gandhi speaking in Raipur Phulwari (Uttar Pradesh,India, 2008); cassava research laboratory at the National Crops Resources Research Institute (Namulonge, Uganda, 2009).
Innovation:
Te Dierence Between a Bleak Future and a Bright One
In India, just like everywhere else we work, the needs o the poor are greater than the resources available to helpthem solve their problems. It is important to get more money, but that alone will not solve the big problems. Tis iswhy Melinda and I are such big believers in innovations that allow you to do a lot more or the same cost.During the last two centuries, there have been a huge number o innovations that have undamentally changed thehuman condition—more than doubling our lie span and giving us cheap energy and more ood. Society underinvestsin innovation in general but particularly in two important areas. One area is innovations that would mostly benetpoor people—there is too little investment here because the poor can’t generate a market demand. Te second area issectors like education or preventative health services, where there isn’t an agreed-upon measure o excellence to tellthe market how to pick the best ideas.I we project what the world will be like 10 years rom now without innovation in health, education, energy, or ood,the picture is quite bleak. Health costs or the rich will escalate, orcing tough trade-os and keeping the poor stuck inthe bad situation they are in today. In the United States, rising education costs will mean that ewer people will be ableto get a great college education and the public K–12 system will still be doing a poor job or the underprivileged. Wewill have to increase the price o energy to reduce consumption, and the poor will suer rom both this higher cost andthe eects o climate change. In ood we will have big shortages because we won’t have enough land to eed the world’sgrowing population and support its richer diet.However, I am optimistic that innovations will allow us to avoid these bleak outcomes. In the United States,advances in online learning and new ways to help teachers improve will make a great education more accessible thanever. With vaccines, drugs, and other improvements, health in poor countries will continue to get better, and peoplewill choose to have smaller amilies. With better seeds, training, and access to markets, armers in poor countries willbe able to grow more ood. Te world will nd clean ways to produce electricity at a lower cost, and more people willli themselves out o poverty.Although innovation is unpredictable, there is a lot that governments, private companies, and oundations can doto accelerate it. Rich governments need to spend more on research and development, or instance, and we need bettermeasurement systems in health and education to determine what works.Melinda and I see our oundation’s key role as investing in innovations that would not otherwise be unded.Tis draws not only on our backgrounds in technology but also on the oundation’s size and ability to take a long-term view and take large risks on new approaches. Warren Buett put it well in 2006 when he told us, “Don’t justgo or sae projects. You can bat a thousand in this game i you want to by doing nothing important. Or you’ll
2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
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