"It’s pretty clear to me that just about anyone who’s living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens," Bill Gates wrote. "In fact, if I were in their shoes, that’s what I would do — I would raise chickens," gates wrote in his blog.
The Coop Dreams project is being implemented in cooperation with Heifer International, a charity organization working to eradicate poverty in the developing countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, by handing out livestock and offering agricultural training to the locals.
"How can he think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle, not knowing how to produce?" Bolivian Development Minister Cesar Cocarico told reporters in La Paz on Wednesday.
"Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia and should apologize to us,” he added.
Bolivia produces 197 million chickens annually and has the capacity to export 36 million hens, the country’s poultry producing association said in a statement.
