JOHANNESBURG: Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, warned Monday that Africa’s AIDS pandemic was nearly invisible in the West, in an appearance here alongside South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela.

“People (in the West) don’t get exposure to these problems. If maybe it was in a neighbouring country, the humanitarian instincts of the rich world would have reacted,” the Microsoft tycoon told a youth forum.

Mandela said young people needed to become militant in fighting the pandemic, which has infected nearly 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and has left some 11 million orphans on the continent, according to UN figures.

“The fight against AIDS will indeed require another social revolution,” he said.

“Once more the youth of our country are called upon to play a leading role in a social revolution, as they did so heroically in the revolutionary struggle against apartheid.”

Gates and Mandela were participating in a group discussion with South African teenagers Monday on the role of young people in fighting AIDS in one of the world’s most-affected countries.

They were accompanied by their wives, Melinda Gates and Mozambique’s former first lady Graca Machel.

Bill and Melinda Gates announced on Sunday their foundation was donating 168 million dollars to fund anti-malaria programmes in Mozambique, where the mosquito-borne disease is the country’s biggest killer.—AFP