Bill Gates Speech About Africa Will Shock You-Read

Microsoft founder and co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates delivers a lecture at the University of Pretoria, Mamelodi’s Campus, for the 14th Nelson Mandela annual lecture on July 17, 2016. (Photo credit MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)

Political instability, widespread disease and other issues mar Africa and inhibit its progress. But billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates thinks there’s hope, and that the continent has a key asset that could boost growth: its youth.

Gates offered his encouraging take on Africa’s future on Sunday — the eve of Mandela day. The Microsoft MSFT +0.75% cofounder delivered the 14th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture Series, an event that has boasted speakers such as Bill Clinton, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile. The Nelson Mandela Foundation organizes the lecture series, which offers prominent leaders a platform to address thorny social issues. On Sunday, Gates took on the obstacles facing African youth and pledged to continue investing in the continent.
“If young people are sick and malnourished, their bodies and their brains will never fully develop. If they are not educated well, their minds will lie dormant. If they do not have access to economic opportunities, they will not be able to achieve their goals,” Gates said, according to prepared remarks posted to his blog, Gates Notes.

Young people can provide innovative solutions to the region’s problems — more than older people — “because they are not locked in by the limits of the past,” Gates said. He alluded to his own experience and that of other big players in tech to illustrate the power of young minds.
“When I started Microsoft in 1975 – at the age of 19 – computer science was a young field. We didn’t feel beholden to old notions about what computers could or should do. We dreamed about the next big thing, and we sco
ured the world around us for the ideas and the tools that would help us create it. But it wasn’t just at Microsoft. Steve Jobs was 21 when he started Apple. Mark Zuckerberg was only 19 when he started Facebook.