Bolivia cries fowl, rejects hens donation from Bill Gates

Bolivia’s government has rejected a donation of chickens from the billionaire tech magnate, who planned to send 100,000 fowls to impoverished countries in an effort to end world poverty.

The world’s wealthiest man, who has invested more than a billion dollars in the United Kingdom, offered the stark warning a day after some polls suggested the Leave campaign had edged ahead.

“How can he think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce?” said César Cocaric, the country’s Minister of Development, said about Gates’ gift.

“I find it rude, because unfortunately some people, especially in the empire [the United States], still see us as beggars”.

Gates announced the chicken initiative earlier this month, writing that “It’s pretty clear to me that just about anyone who’s living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens” because they’re cheap, a good investment, eggs keep kids healthy and women can sell them. “Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia”.

“When I was growing up, chickens weren’t something you studied, they were something you made silly jokes about”, Gates says in ablog post titled “Why I would Raise Chickens”. Breeding and selling them is low-cost and profitable, he said, adding that their eggs can battle malnutrition. “Eventually, with a sale price of $5 per chicken-which is typical in West Africa-she can earn more than $1,000 a year, versus the extreme-poverty line of about $700 a year”. He has a point: The country produces about 197 million chickens annually, with the ability to ship about 36 million of them to other nations, a local poultry group says.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America, with an estimated poverty rate of 59 percent and an average life expentency of 67 years.