Bill Gates Explains the Trends and Challenges Facing the Global Population

Bill Gates has a plan for Earth’s next 100 years — and believes the solutions lie in empowering Africa’s youth.

“Well Africa youth is like youth everywhere, where they’re willing to look at, do things new ways,” he said. “They’re committed to improving their country in the world.”

Overall, he is optimistic about solving problems in the world’s poorest countries because so much progress has already been made globally.

“If we really look at the education, nutrition, and the infrastructure, and see the world as having at least four different tiers we see that now most people are not on that bottom tier. Most people are in middle income countries: China, Brazil. So many countries have had success. And so we can say ok, what was done there and how can we apply that to get every country up to that level? And so the actual progress in reducing poverty, I think it surprises people when they look into it,” he explained. “How do we take the remaining poorest countries, a lot of which are in Africa and help them in the same way? Yeah, the way that we're going to keep leaders engaged in this process, and share with them where it's going well and where it's not is, sitting down, merely looking at numbers, having some heroes who are driving this forward come and talk about their work.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation created Goalkeepers, which is dedicated to accelerating progress toward the UN’s sustainable development goals. Its reports take a detailed look at progress being made around the globe.