Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Forbes announced today that Mexico’s telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim has become the world’s richest man, the first from a developing nation. In the US, there’s a long tradition of billionaire philanthropy, but in developing nations, it’s another matter. Anchor David Baron speaks with Musa Okwonga, Director for Press at the Institute for Philanthropy in London, about what some of the wealthiest people in developing nations do with their fortunes.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

DAVID BARON: Move over Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The world’s richest man now is Carlos Slim. The Mexican telecom’s tycoon is the first person from a developing country to take top spot on the Forbes billionaires list. But there are plenty of other billionaires on that list from countries like China, India and Brazil. Here in the US, there’s a long tradition of the rich giving their money away to a good cause. So what about billionaires in other countries? Musa Okwonga is with the Institute for Philanthropy in London. He says philanthropy is on the rise in developing nations.

MUSA OKWONGA: If you look at someone like [INDISCERNIBLE] for example, he recently pledged a billion dollars to fund a university in India. So large scale giving does exist in countries like India. If you look at China, [INDISCERNIBLE] I think pledged 30 million dollars to the earthquake around the time of the Beijing Olympics. So, there is big giving in these nations. I think the reason that you don’t see giving on the scale yet of the US is variety of fact, one of which is they didn’t have the same philanthropy infrastructures. If you look at the US, you have a very thriving civil society sector, you have, the chronicle of philanthropy, you have evaluation, you have groups of people advising philanthropists how to give. You don’t have the same infrastructures in places like Hindu and China. I think that’s one of the reasons.

DAVID BARON: [OVERLAPPING] So it’s, you would say it’s actually harder to give away your money in a place like India?

MUSA OKWONGA: I think structurally there are issues. If you look at, for example, let’s take Mexico where Carlos Slim has a quite a great deal of wealth. One of the things that can drive a thriving civil society is the tax deductions for organizations. Now in Mexico, about half the civil society organizations don’t have a tax-deductible systems available. That’s just one aspect.

DAVID BARON: So that helps to encourage donations?

MUSA OKWONGA: It helps encourage giving. It helps to, you know, if you know that you’re going to give a large sum of money to charity, and the state will provide another, you know, sum on top of that through tax deductions, then that’s great. Another thing to look at I think is the role of the state. A lot of citizens look to the state to make provision, and they might look to the state for partnership. So somewhere like China for example, where I could name the example of Laura [INDISCERNIBLE] foundation. She works very much in public health and hepatitis. If you’re working in China, and you’re giving money away, the system of government is such that they prefer doing is to work in partnership with them. Whereas, in the US for example, you might just go and start something independently of the state. So there are different bureaucracies or hurdles to engage.

DAVID BARON: In many of these developing countries, places like Brazil, places like Mexico, you do have a small number of very wealth people, and a very large number of extraordinarily poor people. There’s a lot that’s said about the missing middle class, in some of these countries. Are some of the wealthy in developing countries trying to address that in equality?

MUSA OKWONGA: Very, very much so. I mean, the organization where I work, the institute for philanthropy, we advise wealthy that is all over the world on their giving. And one of the things that we look at in particular is in equality and systemic change. So, we get [INDISCERNIBLE] from around the world who come to look at ways to galvanize, you know, a middle class through entrepreneurship. This week they’re in Rwanda, so we are definitely looking at addressing that balance.

DAVID BARON: Just curious with the number of clients that you deal with from around the world, do any of them come with unusual kind of quirky requests about how they want to spend their money, some way that really surprised you?

MUSA OKWONGA: What surprised me, I mean, we wrote a book with [INDISCERNIBLE] a couple years ago called The Philanthropy Workshop Innovations, which basically was a series of personal accounts with the giving by philanthropists from around the world. And one person approached us and he said, well, I really care about fish. We were like, well that was a bit, you know, fish is a bit strange, right? Who cares about, you know fish? But his point was that he was a marine biologist, he was also someone from a very wealthy family. And he said, “Well, in 15 years my daughter will not be able to eat cod.” Codfish docks are decimated, and, you know, the world is losing a really important source of wild protein. And he was saying, what we really need to do is encourage sustainability. So what seemed quite a strange request all of a sudden was quite forensic, because this guy had a doctorate in marine biology, he has wealth to affect change. And so he went to bed thinking, well how can we bring this about? Do we form an advocacy platform? Do we fund a better research? Do you look at different European centers of excellence that look at fisheries and sustainability in fish stock? And so we’re really looking at making traction in that area. So, you know, he came through the door talking about fish, and all of a sudden we’re all converts, you know, we’re thinking well this is great, you know, he’s on to something.

DAVID BARON: Musa Okwonga is the director for press at the institute for philanthropy. He joined us from London. Thank you.

MUSA OKWONGA: The pleasure is mine. Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.