Gates
© Michael Gottschalk/Getty ImagesBill Gates at Munich Security Conference • 2017
The headline of a recent LifeSiteNews article declared that the "German Government funds several Gates Foundation projects to the tune of 3.8 million euros". This is a somewhat curious revelation, but not surprisingly, given the relatively paltry sum, it did not inspire more than a flurry of interest on social media. In fact, the actual total cited in the German source for the article is not €3.8 million, but €3.8 billion.

Furthermore, although the correct sum is far more imposing, it needs to be stressed that the funding in question is not in fact funding of Gates Foundation projects or programmes per se, but rather German co-funding of projects or programmes in which the Gates Foundation is also involved. The confusion is still apparent in the tweet below:

The source is an article on the German website Transparenztest (Transparency Test), which in turn cites funding data furnished by the German Government itself in a June 29th written response to a parliamentary query on German cooperation with private foundations.

Transparenztest calculated the €3.8 billion total based on German Government data. This total includes both funding for joint German Government/Gates Foundation projects and non-project-linked German contributions to programmes. Unfortunately, however, Transparenztest has misconstrued the nature of the latter funding.

The project funding involves nine joint projects of the Gates Foundation and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The total project funding comes to nearly €450 million. The project funding covers a period from 2017 (the earliest start date) to 2025 (the latest completion date).

The more copious programme funding involves 22 programmes and comes to nearly €3.4 billion. The funding is spread out over a period of more than 25 years from 2002 (the earliest start date) to 2030 (the latest completion date), although, as Transparenztest stresses, most of the grants are more recent. Here too, most of the funding comes from the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, although a few of the grants were made by the Ministry of Education and Research.

Some of the programme entries in the German Government data identify the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMFG) as one sponsor among others, whereas other entries list it as the sole sponsoring 'foundation/organisation'.

In keeping with the subject of the parliamentary query, however, this appears only to mean that the Gates Foundation is the sole private sponsor involved. Virtually all the programmes involve significant public sponsorship, not only from Germany, but also from many other countries and international organisations.

[...]

A more detailed analysis of the German Government data is undoubtedly in order. What is clear, at any rate, is that Germany is a crucial partner - not funder - of the Gates Foundation and that the co-funding it has provided both to projects and to programmes in this capacity runs into the billions, not the millions.
About the Author:
Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, translator and researcher working in Europe. Subscribe to his Substack.