SimplyAbuDhabi XXXVII

He is impatient with the cynicism that surrounds charitable giving in Britain. “You are the most generous with your Red Nose Day and Comic Relief, but you also criticise aid in a way no other country does. It’s bizarre. There is a sense that your aid money is being frittered away, but that is a huge mistake - just look at life expectancy or literacy. Africa had 20 per cent literacy in the Eighties; now its 75 per cent. Three times as many children died in the Seventies. Most people don’t know anything about Africa. It’s very solvable, once you have stability.” We jump in the car for a dinner where he will be seated as the guest of honour between two presidents, but the music is so loud he says he can barely hear. Desperate to go to bed after a 16-hour day, he still waits so he can have a quiet discussion with the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. Nelson Mandela was also a friend. It says on his schedule that he needs nine hours’ sleep - underlined. What keeps him awake at night? The thought of a pandemic, he replies. “It’s been 100 years since we had a huge flu epidemic. People travel more today, so the speed of spread would be faster if you had a respiratory transmitted disease. The numbers could be horrific.” Next morning, he addresses the union, again politely listening for several hours to others’ lengthy speeches. In many ways he is more than a good man in Africa, a 21st-century missionary: he is not trying to woo them to a religion or a creed, Catholicism or capitalism, he is just a technocrat trying to sort out their glitches and weak spots, as he once did with Microsoft. His failure, I suggest, is that he hasn’t convinced many to follow him. At the word “failure”, he looks momentarily riled, maybe forgetting he has often suggested embracing failure in his blogs - it’s obviously not a word he feels comfortable with. “When some give a lot, it makes you wonder why the rest of them don’t,” he eventually says. “But I believe it should be voluntary in nature.” He has paid more than $10 billion in taxes. “But I should have paid more,” he thinks, sounding almost apologetic. “I more than followed the law, but I think things should be more progressive.” The worry, he finally suggests, is that the rich are getting richer but their philanthropy isn’t catching up. He was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 31; now he says, “It is fascinating that, for the first time in my life, people are saying, ‘Should you even have billionaires?’ ” Does he think this has anything to do with the rise of populism? He agrees. “Trump, Brexit, the yellow jackets - groups of people feeling left behind, disrespected That after the 2008 financial crisis, nobody was hanged and a few of the rich actually got richer while everyone else suffered.” He laughs when I ask whether the super-rich are aware of the anger they have caused, more at the idea that he is hanging out with multiple other billionaires than anything else. “We aren’t all best friends,” he insists. Reluctant to pontificate on Brexit, because he says he hasn’t studied the data in depth, he merely volunteers, “There is a secular wave of populist politicians and they have associated themselves with very nationalist, anti-creative, anti-immigrant feelings on the extreme left and right, ignoring that the EU has brought incredible benefits.” He worries that there is so much negativity towards governments, “citizens of nowhere” and experts and finds it illogical - the world, he believes as an obsessive optimist, is improving rapidly on almost every measurement. “I see the paradox from an objective point of view. Would you rather be a woman in the workplace now or 20 years ago? Would you rather be a gay person today or 20 years ago? I see that as progress. We will cure Alzheimer’s, we will tackle obesity and diabetes. Children already drink less. They have sex later. They have a better relationship with their parents. Teenage girls have fewer pregnancies.” 056 | SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL SIMPLY INFLUENTIAL | 057 In Britain you criticise aid in a way no other country does. It’s bizarre.” “