You must have read the news that philanthropist Bill Gates plans to give away his wealth within the next 20 years. His charity foundation, which has been making various interventions in global public health, now has till December 31, 2045, to spend down about $200bn to facilitate health and human development. Even more fascinating is that Bill Gates wants the money to offset some of the imbalances caused by the Donald Trump administration’s abrupt cutbacks to health and development agencies, such as USAID and PEPFAR. Many of us are familiar with the Biblical narrative of a rich young ruler who came up to Jesus to ask what he needed to do to secure eternal life. He was asked to give up his wealth and follow the Saviour. We were told that the young ruler “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions”. Few things in the world can be as hard for the truly rich to give up as their wealth. It must be relatively easier to give from little than to shrink the vast reserves of riches by as much as an inch.

Bill Gates is not only giving money to the world sorely in need of capital to develop, but it is also impressive how much he has committed to learning about issues of health and development in the world. In the interview he gave to the New York Times, he came across as having studied the scale of the problem well enough. This is a man seeking to attain eternal life by helping the most vulnerable people in the world to live.

Ordinarily, I am ambivalent about philanthropy. While I am not against charity, it appals me how the enterprise of giving can reinforce what it seeks to displace. The problem is worse in Nigeria, where faux philanthropy overtakes governance. The leaders who should provide basic amenities, public infrastructure, and a well-coordinated social safety net for the vulnerable will abjure their responsibilities and flaunt charity. You will see Governor So-and-so “empowering” this and that community by dashing them cartons of noodles or Keke Marwa or wheelbarrows! There is perhaps no word in the Nigerian lexicon that has been serially abused by our visionless leaders more than “empowerment”. What Nigerian leaders call “empowerment” is often an exhibition of the poverty of the people they have socially disenfranchised.

In the end, I took a few things away from reading about Bill Gates’ motivations for setting a 20-year clock for human development. One is his optimism that the world we live in can be better. You can see that ethic of hope in his conviction that longstanding problems like malaria can be permanently eliminated in Africa; that maternal mortality can be significantly reduced; that childhood mortality can become a thing of the past; and that the world can live far more prosperous lives. Years ago, I learned the value of hope from reading Olufemi Taiwo’s Africa Must Be Modern. In the book, he argues that hope necessarily propels society towards modernity and development.

Until then, hope was just an abstract idea for me. But reading through that book, I started to understand hope differently. Hope is what galvanises people even when the odds are demonstrably against them. From the field of science where people immerse themselves in experiments that might fail hundreds of times before they succeed to the arena of politics where leaders fight to pull their people from the brink of disaster and set them on the path of prosperity, the hope that what we are doing ultimately matters is what makes all the difference. Without hope, we cannot muster the self-discipline necessary for success. I am of the firm belief that our leaders’ lack of optimism about the ability of their country to make it is one of the reasons they imagine their actions are not consequential. Corrupt African leaders are not just mere thieves bent on despoiling their people; their wantonness expresses their deep cynicism about people’s chances. In his interview, Bill Gates seemed to express more hope for the future of poorer countries to live healthier and prosperous lives than you are likely to hear from their own leaders. He can afford to be detached from reality, but if the world changes, it is also because someone was naïve enough to be optimistic.

The second thing that struck me about Bill Gates’s commitment to alleviating poverty is his understanding of the subject, and that is why I think our renowned prosperity preacher, Pastor David Ibiyeomie, can learn something from him. Recently, a clip from a sermon he preached went viral. In the sermon, he proclaimed “God hates poverty” and “God hates poor people”. His subsequent attempts to clarify his message only further unfolded his mindset as someone who is superstitious about poverty. He proof-texts the Bible by overlooking every divine promise of reprieve for those who have been beaten by the hardships of life to select a few verses that support his prejudices. In a country where about 90 per cent (or more) of people live in the extreme conditions of multi-generational poverty and multi-dimensional poverty, it takes a lack of self-awareness to declare that even God hates poor people. If God hates poverty and the materially poor, then he must hate Africans!

Bill Gates, on the other hand, approaches poverty like a scientist. He sees the condition as a mere physiological one that can be treated if one rightly diagnoses it and applies the correct principles. One side is pessimistic and chooses to mythologise what is essentially a treatable condition; the other is optimistic enough to want to facilitate a world where capital investment and the principles of science can produce flourishing for humankind. The difference between the two is not merely the distinctions between “science” and “religion,” but about their respective moral visions. Please note that both religion and science are knowledge means that can be applied to engineer ethical solutions in the world. In the hands of a person who despairs about the fate of humans, the technologies of religion and science will produce nothing but death. The person who is invigorated with hope for humankind will apply principles from either science or religion to produce more life.

Finally, it is also ironic that the same Bill Gates, against whom some churches prayed during the COVID-19 pandemic, is also the person looking out for the good of the majority. It was funny, but churches, where pastors give annual prophecies, were blindsided by the global pandemic, while Bill Gates, who relied on scientific principles, accurately predicted its possibility years before it happened. I guess some of the preachers got envious because they gathered their ignorant flock and asked them to pray against Bill Gates as the “anti-Christ” or the “globalist”. Today, it is the same Bill Gates who is looking out for the good of the world. If Jesus were called to judge between the preachers who say we will be locked out of eternal life because of tithes and Bill Gates, who is demonstrating the ethics of generosity, empathy, and humanity, who do you think he would say practices true religion?