'Will donate USD 6 billion if you have plan to remove hunger': Elon Musk to UN

SpaceX and Tesla founder and the world's richest man, Elon Musk has challenged the United Nations over its statement that just a small percentage of his wealth could help solve world hunger.

Now, Musk is famous for his tweets and witty responses to his followers but what he did over the weekend was pretty unusual. He agreed to give away $6 billion if the United Nations World Food Program presents him with a good enough strategy or plan.

This came after David Beasley, the director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) told CNN that a one-time payment of 2% of Musk's wealth or other billionaires will be able to solve global hunger.

In a response to a tweet by Dr Eli David, who is a co-founder of a company called Deep Instinct that was a screenshot of the CNN article mentioning Beasley, Musk tweeted, "If the WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6 billion will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it."

Later, Musk also added to the thread, "But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent."

Beasley had said, "Musk's 2% can help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated." However, he clarified on the same Twitter thread later on that he might have been misunderstood. He said, "We’ve never said $6B [billion] would solve world hunger. This is a one-time donation to save 42 million lives during this unprecedented hunger crisis. The $8.4B you refer to covers what we needed to reach 115 million people in 2020 with food assistance. We need $6B plus NOW on top of our existing funding requirements due to the perfect storm from the compounding impact of Covid, conflict and climate shocks."

As of now, the challenge seems open from both ends. While the WFP wants to have a conversation over why billionaires can solve world hunger, Musk was WFP to show him a plan.

Source : DNA India