Oh goodness. Dystopia at its finest. Poor Africa
Just a quick reminder to provide a bit of context around how conversations on this forum relate to Solid.
The link box clearly describes Trust Stamp as a biometric identity platform. Identity platforms are related to Solid.
A little intro text with the link would’ve been better to provide some context. What I got from the article was the urgent need for open-standards based, decentralized identity solutions such as those that Solid and others are working on.
I think the concerns raised in the article are real (and not in the realm of the crazy conspiracy theories @jeffz was referring to) and it is good to raise questions, and have public debates now that things are moving so fast. Many solutions arising from COVID19 are rushed and can have intended or unintended consequences that are hard to oversee for those not actively involved. Surveillance capitalism is unfortunately very real, and covid is the perfect storm to push its agenda much further.
Do the people involved have good motives? Probably most have. Do Bill and Melinda only have kindness in their hearts. I don’t know them, probably they have. But how do I feel about billionaires being big-time altruists… hmm. I don’t know Bill’s convictions, but I can imagine that tech is playing a bigger role in his vision of how people are governed, than most people would be comfortable with. He’s probably choosing Microsoft as his preferred provider too. But that’s just guesswork of mine. All in all I’d rather see open development, government involvement and proper constraints put to commercial parties. I’m sure Mastercard is in this purely for the bottom line, as are other commercial entities. I do see the dystopia coming from this if we are not careful. Let the billionaires pay their taxes first and we’ll have more to spend on doing the right thing 
I very much agree with @aschrijver that billionaire altruism is suspect and should be replaced with tax-paying, that open source is better than proprietary, that Bill Gates is not qualified to determine public health goals, that there are many data privacy concerns about covid software and biometrics in general.
I’m still waiting for the cartoon version of the Book of Revelation, but this is close enough I guess…and it is relevant to Solid