Some of the world's richest people are competing in what has been a centuries-old rivalry, the race into space. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two richest people on the planet, each have big plans for extraterrestrial life. They predict an accessible internet from anywhere, humans are an interplanetary species, and the revolving space station hosts permanent residents. In fact, Bill Gates shows no interest in this race of billionaires. Bill Gates, the fourth richest person alive, according to Forbes, has what he considers a higher aspiration on Earth. While internet constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's proposed Project Kuiper aim to bring profit-seeking improvements to the world's pressing connectivity problems. Bill Gates has a different view he shared with CNN that there are more basic problems are taking up his time now ang.
"The space race is mostly a commercial market. Having a good internet connection across Africa is a good thing," he said
According to him, using satellite observations to see what is happening to agriculture and climate change.
"So it's not at all philanthropic motivated. I hope those rich people will find a way to return their wealth to society with high impact," said Bill Gates.
According to him, they can't, or shouldn't, want to spend it all on their own.
"Until we can get rid of malaria and tuberculosis, and all the diseases that are so terrible in poor countries, that will be my total focus," he stressed.
His philanthropic efforts have made strides. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnership with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi has recently succeeded in helping to eradicate onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness, in Niger, the first African country to do so. The disease is transmitted to humans through repeated exposure to the bites of infected blackflies and can causes permanent blindness. More than 99 percent of people infected with river blindness live in 31 African countries, according to the World Health Organization. The Microsoft founder says he has one aspiration for 2022, namely eradicating polio.
"That's a big and important reason for me. So if Afghanistan can stay stable, it looks like we will eventually bring wild polio down to zero. And we've been working on it for more than 20 years," he said.
But there are many challenges. Gates said because people around the world don't see the disease, initiatives to help cure them are severely underfunded.
"We really need to invest in African health, for children to survive. We always come out and say we want more governments and philanthropists to get involved," he said.
More than ten years ago, Bill Gates, together with Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, created the Giving Pledge, a commitment made by America's 40 richest people to give away the majority of their wealth to address some of the world's most pressing problems.
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