Full coverage of the WEF in Davos

Bill Gates used the Davos forum yesterday to call for a new form of capitalism to help the poorest people on the planet.

The Microsoft co-founder, who is contemplating retiring this summer, was not quite advocating revolution, but instead appealed for business to work better with governments and non-profit groups to alleviate global poverty. Mr Gates, who will concentrate on his charitable foundation, gave hints that his retirement will be spent encouraging the use of technology to ease the lives of the destitute.

“If we are going to have a chance of changing their lives, we need another level of innovation,” he said. “I’m an optimist, but I’m an impatient optimist. The world is getting better, but it is not getting better fast enough and it is not getting better for everyone . . . the most needy people get the least. Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their needs?”

Mr Gates said malaria killed more than a million people a year, but “it gets far less attention than the drugs to help with baldness”. His foundation has given huge sums for research into the disease, paying out $7.8 billion (£3.95 billion) for health projects.

Mr Gates told last year’s World Economic Forum that he was tripling his foundation’s funding for eradicating tuberculosis to $900 million by 2015.

Mr Gates issued the challenge to business leaders after the gathering earlier heard Bono, the U2 singer, accuse the world’s richest countries of reneging on promises made in 2005 for a $50 billion increase in aid to the world’s poorest by 2010. Overall, aid to Africa fell in real terms in 2006.

Bono said: “The G8 are not making good on their commitments. This is a scandal. It makes the kind of dialogue that social movements have been having with governments look preposterous.”

The performer said he had had two recent verbal pledges from the leaders of Germany and France. “Angela Merkel has promised to meet her commitment and that is courageous, given Germany’s other spending,” he said.

President Sarkozy told Bono that he would try to keep France’s promise to the world’s poorest. “Sarkozy said ‘it is very hard for me, I made a promise to the French people to make their lives better but I commit to you — we will get to work and keep our promise’.”

Despite the shortfalls, there had been successes. “There are now two million Africans on retroviral drugs and that is pretty astonishing,” Bono said.

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