Bill Gates earned the ire of Bolivians this week. The billionaire offered to donate 100,000 chickens to some of the poorest countries in the world, a move that was deemed insulting by Bolivia's state officials.
While Gates didn't actually name Bolivia as a beneficiary in his Coop Dreams initiative, officials in the Andean country strongly declined the aid and demanded an apology from the philanthropist.
But what exactly did the Latin American country find so offensive in this outreach?
Bolivia's Ruffled Feathers
The former Microsoft CEO believes raising poultry is a viable source of income for the 1 billion people in the world who live on just $2 a day.
"If I were in their shoes," Gates writes in his blog, "that's what I would do — I would raise chickens."
To the Bolivians, however, the billionaire knows nothing about the country's economic conditions.
"[Gates must] think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce," Cesar Cocarico, Bolivia's land and rural development minister, told the press.
"I think it's rude coming from a magnate that does not know Bolivia's reality," Cocarico added.
And this reality is backed by figures indicating how the country's GDP per capita has almost tripled to $3,119 in less than a decade. Such sweeping changes took effect when Bolivia's current president, Evo Morales, took office.
Bolivia remains one of the poorest nations in Latin America. But Morales' leftist views may have propelled the country to institutionalize reforms, many of which steer away from dependence on Western capitalism and even foreign aid.
With his strong anti-imperialist stance, Morales also kicked the U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg out of the country in 2008.
And, only a few years ago, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was expelled from Bolivia too.
Given how the U.S. and Bolivia's diplomatic relations have gone south, declining Gates' livelihood program is but one of the many incidents in Bolivia's track record of rejecting help from the U.S., observers point out, whether it be from philanthropists like Gates or a government agency like USAID.
Keeping Dreams In A Coop?
Even by the sheer number, the 100,000 chickens that each beneficiary country will get under the Coop Dreams program pale in comparison to the 193.6 million chickens already being produced by Bolivia.
Still, Gates believes, the donation could help poor populations, such as those in Burkina Faso and other sub-Saharan countries. Foundation partners have been studying the impact of poultry farming on life circumstances, especially of women farmers, in the region.
"Women who sell chickens," Gates explains, "are likely to reinvest the profits in their families." And this can have a multiplier effect.
This is why Gates is betting big on chickens, inspite of the initiative ruffling a few feathers.
Coop Dreams will have Gates teaming up with Heifer International for the livestock program.
