2015 Gates Annual Letter
1. Wiping out major diseases - brings tears to my eyes knowing that GF, Carter and other foundations will permanently get rid of so many horrible diseases.<p>2. African crop yield - If US can grow 159 bushels of corn per acre, and African countries are currently at 29, why is the 15 year goal for African countries only 48 bushels per acre instead of somewhere close to the US? Is that because of tech-transfer difficulties or rather the soil/environment?<p>3. Mobile banking - Wish US would get on with it too. All the problems he listed apply to the poor in US too. There is no way for me to immediately send $100 to anyone in the US without resorting to BTC or wire-transfers. Even with <a href="https://www.clearxchange.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.clearxchange.com/</a> it still takes 2-3 days.<p>4. Software for education - Couldn't agree more. However, I'm still not sure if we've achieved the correct "global education" format yet. Check out these two KA links: <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/romanticism/romanticism-in-france/a/ingres-portrait-of-madame-rivire" rel="nofollow">https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/roman...</a> and <a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history-basics/Art-1010/v/renaissance-art-introductoin" rel="nofollow">https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history-basics/Ar...</a> - the first reads like a dull Wikipedia page with nested commenting for interaction and the other is a droll Youtube edutainment video. Is this really going to help a 16 year old in Vietnam, Mongolia, or Sierra Leone learn about Art History especially if they cannot understand the accents or localized references? I'm not suggesting that every video or text be translated/localized but before we aim for better software, we should at least figure out the format first. What if you are 12 year old and want to learn the same topic? What if you are 34 with two degrees in sciences? If online education was space exploration, we are in the Wright-brothers stage, decades from even Wernher von Braun stage. Instead of every major university just uploading their video lectures and syllabi online, I'd love to see someone try to create a real global school (non-commercial) that presents the education material fit for each learner. I don't mean tests like what KA is doing but the course material itself.