On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan expressed horror at wildlife biologist and TV host Forrest Galante‘s account of what he described as a disastrous unintended consequence of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiative in Africa.
The conversation began with Rogan and Galante discussing Bill Gates’ reinvention from a ruthless 1990s tech magnate to global philanthropist, before Galante launched into a firsthand account of events he said he witnessed in the Cahora Bassa Delta region of the Zambezi Valley.
“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation decided that there was too much malaria in Africa,” Galante told Rogan. “Which you and I could probably agree with. Malaria is bad. So what did they do? They gave all of these people living in tribal villages… they gave millions of mosquito nets out to all these people to avoid malaria.”
Galante then asked Rogan to guess what happened next.
“Guess what the people who are starving to death did with their mosquito nets,” he said. Rogan answered without hesitation: “They fished with them.”
Galante confirmed it and explained the scale of the damage. Because mosquito net mesh is fine enough to block insects, it proved equally effective at trapping juvenile fish.
“These mosquito nets now indiscriminately catch tiny baby fish in areas like Cahora Bassa where the fish go to breed and reproduce and populate,” he said. “So now these wonderful philanthropists that have given out millions of nets have destroyed an ecosystem, crashed a fish population, and created widespread hunger for people that otherwise had plenty of resources. All because they were trying to help with their mosquito nets.”
Galante also argued that the communities in question already had their own ways of managing the disease.
“They have their own way of dealing with malaria. They sit in smoky huts at night. They sleep with a campfire,” he said. “Yes, they still get malaria, some of them, but they deal with it their own way.”
Rogan responded with a simple “Oh god,” and Galante continued.
He stated, “They’ve taken such a rich and important part of Africa, one of the most abundant freshwater fisheries in the world, and destroyed it because they’re helping by handing out mosquito nets. And they’re still giving out mosquito nets, by the way.”
Galante then summed up the situation bluntly: “So now you have people with malaria and hunger.”
The exchange turned more pointed when Rogan questioned the Foundation’s true motivations.
“I don’t think it is,” he said, referring to whether the effort was genuinely charitable. “I think it’s a ruse. And I think what a lot of it is, is this thing like, we are doing philanthropy. But then you go, ‘Oh, but you’re profiting. You’re making hundreds of millions of dollars from this philanthropy.'”
