ABSTRACT
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is reshaping the way in which society provides for education, health care, and food. Founded in 1994 as the William H. Gates Foundation, their initial philanthropic initiatives focused on “global health and community needs in the Pacifi c northwest.”1 Initial education programs supported increasing public library users’ access to the internet and college scholarship funding. During the last election, the Gates Foundation teamed with the Eli Broad Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to fund Strong American Schools, a “nonpartisan campaign aimed at elevating American education to the top of the presidential campaign agenda between now and November 2008.”2 In recent speeches Bill Gates has trumpeted Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools as the model for education reform. In 1998, the Gates Foundation entered the health arena by funding programs to develop childhood vaccines; and in 1999, the foundation funded programs to develop an AIDS vaccine. In January 2003, the Gates Foundation launched the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative to stimulate researchers to “develop solutions to critical scientifi c and technological advances against diseases of the developing world.”3 Reasoning that improved health also required improved nutrition, the Gates Foundation began funding research on and distribution of genetically engineered crops and the commercialization of agriculture through the use of modern varieties of fertilizer and pesticides. In 2006, the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations jointly formed Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).4
