ABUJA, Nigeria (AFX) - Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates met President Olusegun Obasanjo this weekend for talks on fighting poverty and disease on the world's poorest continent, a senior official said Sunday.
Information Minister Frank Nweke said Gates arrived in Nigeria with his wife, Melinda, on Saturday and met with Obasanjo at his farm on the outskirts of the country's biggest city, Lagos.
'The visit is to hold a number of discussions on plans to manufacture cheap software in Nigeria, fight HIV/AIDS and alleviate poverty,' Nweke said.
Gates' trip to Nigeria, Nweke said, was a follow-up on discussions the world's richest man had with Obasanjo at the last meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Nweke gave no further details.
With an endowment of $31.9 billion, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has granted more than $11 billion since its inception in 2000 to projects to help ease extreme poverty in more than 100 countries.
Forbes magazine ranks Gates as the world's richest man, worth an estimated $53 billion.
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