During a wide-ranging discussion with Rima Al Mokarrab, the co-chair of Ideas Abu Dhabi, an initiative of Tamkeen, which organised the half-day summit in association with the Aspen Institute, the Microsoft billionaire hailed longstanding partnerships between his foundation and the UAE government in fighting polio and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

Since 2011, the UAE’s president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, has committed more than $376m to support global polio eradication efforts and has also been a major partnership donor to NTD initiatives such the End Fund and the recently-launched Global Institute for Disease Elimination (GLIDE) in Abu Dhabi.

The fight against polio is reaching the so-called last mile but acknowledging the deleterious impact of the pandemic on vaccine campaigns, Gates said: “If it hadn't been for Covid-19, I think we'd be done by now.” And he lamented that dozens of Yemeni children were paralysed this year due to the spread of the virus, in part due to conflict hampering vaccination campaigns. 

The war in Ukraine had also, he said, lead to several European countries cutting aid budgets to reprioritise defence and energy spending, but he added: “We’re stubborn, we understand what it takes.”

Despite these setbacks, Gates celebrated the rise of environmental surveillance during the pandemic and improved diagnostics. “We're going to use that technique worldwide and be able to see disease outbreaks very rapidly,” he explained. 

And Gates, who had warned about the threat of a pandemic some years before Covid-19 emerged, added that while everyone talked about vaccines, it was just as important to have rapid and accurate diagnostics to stop pathogens from going global in the first place.

Alongside polio, the philanthropist made an impassioned plea for greater global efforts to tackle malnutrition, a cause to which his foundation has recently committed an additional $922m.

"If I had one wand, I'd wave it and get rid of malnutrition - even before HIV and malaria," he said. "Over a third of the children in sub-Saharan Africa never develop their body or their brain. They are an average of three inches shorter and their average IQ is low enough that they can never really learn to read or write."

"It's the greatest loss of human potential," he said. "Even worse than the deaths, which are still about five million a year… the greatest tragedy is these kids who never fully develop."

Sharing his own journey into philanthropy and how he was inspired by his late father, Bill Gates Snr, and international financier Warren Buffet, one of the world’s single largest philanthropic donors, Gates called on the next generation of donors in the room to get engaged in causes they care about.

"Everyone's philanthropic journey is different," he told Al Mokarrab said. "Nobody gives their philanthropy dollars just purely based on logic – it is very much a connection to other humans, and you know it’s driven by caring and so part of the beauty of philanthropy is the variety."

The philanthropy forum, which took place in early December, also featured a keynote address from Salama Al Ameemi, the director general of Abu Dhabi’s Authority for Social Contribution—Ma’an, the entity behind the Gulf’s first Social Impact Bond.

Al Ameemi stressed the importance of strong partnerships between the public and private sectors as well as civil society to “help catalyse and accelerate progress at a rate that would not be achievable if we were to work in silos.”

A separate panel, moderated by Jane Wales, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s programme on philanthropy and social innovation, featured Zimbabwean philanthropist and social entrepreneur Elizabeth Tanya Masiyiwa, Dubai-based author Neha Hiranandani, and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud.