SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

050 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 051 The African leaders are all meeting in Ethiopia. White Land Rovers with VVIP signs and national flags on their bonnets queue up to disgorge presidents and prime ministers covered in medals and braid. Bodyguards glare, photographers yell, the elite of the entire continent seem to be converging on the steps of the recently built African Union building. Brass bands are playing, women are dancing as 54 flags flutter in the dry heat. ThenGates arrives, an unobtrusive 63-year-old American wearing a V-neck jumper and loafers, and they rush to greet him. Gates is the first non-political westerner invited to the African Union to give not one but two speeches and I’ve been allowed to “come along for the ride”. The second wealthiest man in the world is worth some $98 billion (£75 billion), more than several of these countries’ GDPs put together. But it’s not his charity or celebrity they are applauding; it’s his advice. He is seen as a good man in Africa, rather than some “western do-gooder” or “white saviour” who wants to assuage his guilt at his colossal good fortune. As Rwanda’s President Kagame, who is chairing the conference, says to me, “We don’t want condescending white people lecturing us where we have gone wrong. Mr Gates wants to fix our health and our IT - anyone would want him in their home.” I had met Africa’s tech support assistant at his London HQ a week earlier to discuss the continent he first visited after he’d already made his billions from Microsoft in the Nineties. His wife of 25 years, Melinda, 54, forced him to go on a safari in Kenya when they were engaged: “I hated holidays and wasn’t that keen on animals,” he says. But they were welcomed into a Masai village where they realised the scale of difference between their West Coast tech world and the villagers’ problems. Neither of them wanted to own a yacht and they would soon have a perfectly decent $125 million house in Seattle, so the couple were determined to help. TheBill & MelindaGates Foundation was created with the support of Gates’ billionaire friend and bridge partner, Warren Buffett, who “still pops by for dinner, [to] do the washing-up and check how his money is being spent”. WhileGates admires China for its astonishing growth rate, it’s Africa that fascinates him. “Africa is exciting because it’s the youngest continent. It has more challenges than any other continent, but it is definitely a glass half full,” he says. Bill Gates in Tanzania, 2017 With fellow philanthropist Warren Buffett in 2017