Bill Gates, who will formally resign from Microsoft later that year, took the spotlight at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Friday as he pledged $306 million to improve agriculture in Africa.

In announcing the grants, Gates called on wealthy companies to engage in “creative capitalism.”

“If we are serious about ending extreme starvation and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women,” Gates said. “The challenge here is to design a system including profit and recognition to do more for the poor.”

Innovating the System

Gates told the summit, “Thirty years, 20 years, 10 years ago, my focus was totally on how the magic of software could change the world.” But he said technology innovation is not sufficient to solve problems and change lives in the third world. “If we are going to have a serious chance of changing their lives, we will need

another level of innovation. Not just technology innovation — we need system innovation.”

Noting that capitalism tends to benefit citizens in “inverse proportion to their need,” he offered a refinement of the capitalist model, one that reflects the human desire to help others as well as the drive to manufacture money. In the current schema, wealthy nations donate money to poor countries, but there’s never ample money to meet the need.

“Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and additionally improving lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces. To manufacture the system sustainable, we need to use profit incentives whenever we can,” he said.

Since profits are hard to come by when serving the very poor, Gates suggested another “market-based incentive” — recognition. considering recognition for good work attracts customers and employees, it “triggers a market-based reward for good behavior,” he said.

Gates described…

Orginal post by Top Tech News