Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates wanted to donate chickens to Bolivia as part of an initiative to help poor nations.
Gates' chicken campaign aims to fight poverty by providing a sustainable source of income to families around the world, particularly those who live in impoverished countries.
The initiative, a collaboration between the billionaire's foundation and Heifer International, plans to distribute 100,000 chickens to countries with high poverty rates including Bolivia.
Gates said that raising chickens is better than computers or the internet in reducing poverty. He contended that chickens can provide families with easy and inexpensive ways to make extra money because the birds feed on what they find on the ground, provide quality nutrition from eggs and meat, need few vaccines and even help empower women.
"Our foundation is betting on chickens. Alongside partners throughout sub-Saharan Africa, we are working to create sustainable market systems for poultry," Gates said.
Bolivia, whose estimated poverty rate of 59 percent is the poorest country in South America but it rejected the offer saying that it does not depend on chickens and that the tech magnate needs to study up its thriving poultry sector. Bolivia notably produces 197 million chickens per year and is capable to export 36 million.
Bolivian Development Minister Cesar Cocarico said that he finds it rude that some people and the United States still see Bolivia's people as beggars.
"How can he think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce?" Cocarico said. "Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia."
For some, the country's response does not at all come as a surprise. Under Bolivia's President Evo Morales, Bolivia has been rejecting aid from the U.S. regardless if it comes from the government or from philanthropic donors.
A pro-environmental platform appears to have a hand on this. In 2010, Bolivia passed "the Law of Mother Earth," which grants all nature equal rights to humans such as the right to persist sans human intervention.
The law aims at radical conservations and measures that can cut pollution and control industry but it also involves the rejection of Western capitalism and development aid.
While Bolivia continues to battle with poverty lagging behind most of the continent in terms of development and economic output, it appears that it can do without Gates' help.
Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has more than doubled since 2007. The number of people who live below the poverty line also dropped by a third during this same period.
Photo: Tom Caswell | Flickr
