By Ghazali Ibrahim 
The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will officially wind down operations and close permanently by December 31, 2045.
This marks the ending of a 45-year run as one of the most influential charitable organizations in history.
The announcement comes on the 25th anniversary of the foundation, which was launched in 2000 by Gates and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.
Over the past two and a half decades, the foundation has disbursed more than $100 billion across global health, education, and development causes, helping to save tens of millions of lives and reshaping public health systems across the developing world.
In an interview with The New York Times, Gates revealed that the foundation will now accelerate its giving, committing over $200 billion in aid within the next 20 years.
The money will be drawn from the foundation’s endowment and nearly all of Gates’s personal fortune.
“You could say this announcement is not very timely,” Gates admitted, referencing the current global political climate and sharp cuts in foreign aid under the Trump administration.
Yet, he remains confident that the foundation’s core goals can be achieved faster with more aggressive investments, despite what he described as a “perilous time.”
Recent reports, including one from The Lancet, warn that cuts to U.S. foreign aid particularly programs like PEPFAR, which fights HIV/AIDS in Africa could cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the coming years.
Gates believes this makes it even more urgent for the foundation to act boldly and quickly.
According to Gates and his team, advances in biomedical tools, vaccination technologies, and artificial intelligence offer powerful opportunities to close global development gaps.
“This is the time to go all in,” Gates said.
Notably, Melinda French Gates, following her divorce from Gates in 2021, left the foundation to start her own philanthropic venture.
Also, longtime donor Warren Buffett has also announced that future contributions will go to a separate family trust.
Despite these changes, Gates remains determined to conclude the foundation’s work on a high note.
He envisions a world in which global health disparities are greatly reduced a vision that depends heavily on innovation and sustained action over the next two decades.
Whether the Gates Foundation can fully realize this vision amid global instability remains to be seen.
