Gates will pay ($76M of) Nigeria's Debt

[keyplyr]

Bill Gates says he will pay off Nigeria's $76 million debt. I guess he got that email too.
[msn.com...]

[lucy24]

Or, at least, $76 million of their debt. (My first reaction was: The entire country is only $76M in debt? I know people with student loans adding up to more than that!)

[keyplyr]

I know people with student loans adding up to more than that

Sociology majors no doubt.

[londrum]

76 million doesn’t sound like very much debt for an entire country. Is that all it is?
some European football clubs spend more than that on a single player. That shows you how messed up the world is.

[lucy24]

Is that all it is?

No: if you read the linked article, the $76M is the cost of one specific project, not the whole national debt.

[graeme_p]

Misleading headline. It says:

Bill Gates promised to pay off this country's $76 million debt — now he's doing it

Of course it would be almost impossible for the country the size of Nigeria to have that little debt,

[lucy24]

I looked it up. A handful of assorted Pacific Island countries have debts totaling less than $76M. (A few claim to have none. So does Liechtenstein. Never did trust Liechtenstein.) If you can believe Wikipedia, Nigeria's total debt is around $15B, i.e. gigadollars, not megadollars, putting them in the exact middle of the list in raw dollar amounts. But that's only because they’re a huge country--7th in the world, by far the most populous in Africa. Whether per capita or as a proportion of GDP, they're near the bottom of the debt list. (Imagine if your own country’s debt were only $60 per capita. A one-time assessment would pay it off.)

[JonathanEdmonton]

And what is Bill getting in return? Or just because He is too kind :)

[lucy24]

Same as all the other stuff done by the Gates foundation: People don't remember you for being absurdly rich; they remember you for what you did with the money. Think Carnegie rather than Scrooge McDuck.

[keyplyr]

And if you ask who's Scrooge McDuck, that's why ;)

[tangor]

Where can I get an application for Gates Debt Relief?