Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates says that Africa will begin to reap the rewards of money invested in it, in his second annual public letter linked to the world of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “With better seeds, training, and access to markets, farmers in poor countries will be able to grow more food. The world will find clean ways to produce electricity at a lower cost, and more people will lift themselves out of poverty.” The upbeat appraisal notes that better education and health pilot programmes to reduce infant mortality in the first 30 days after birth have been shown to be effective. More widespread vaccination programmes are also playing a key role in improving overall health, says Gates. In a separate interview with CNET, where he talks about the problems encountered during the past year of the foundation’s work he says that adult male circumcision, surprisingly, turns out to be one of the hopes for reducing Aids in Africa.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, CNET, The Gates Notes, Bill Gates new web site, launched 24 January
Updated 10 April 13:10 London, England and Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mars has become the latest chocolate maker to go green with its products, making a commitment ” to spend tens of millions of dollars annually certifying that the cocoa used in the $10bn of chocolate products it sells every year is sustainably sourced by 2020,” reports the Financial Times. Mars claims to be the world’s largest end-user of chocolate. The company joins Cadbury (whose European head office is in Rolle, Vaud, Switzerland), the largest chewing gum and sweets maker in the world, which has a significant chocolate business. Cadbury announced in March that it would increase direct Fair Trade buying from farmers, spending £45 million in the next 10 years to “to secure the sustainable socio-economic future of cocoa farming in Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean where the cocoa farming industry is facing increasing challenges.”
