2 February 2012 Last updated at 16:51

Gates recommends diversity in education to tackle discrimination

Bill Gates says the best tool we have to tackle discrimination across the world is education.

Showtime - Gates discusses discrimination

Speaking on World Have Your Say (WHYS) he said an experience of other cultures at school can help promote tolerance and understanding around the world:

"Good teachers can mix things up, assign joint projects and I think all of us can seek out experiences where we're going to be talking and sharing and listening with people of a different background than our own."

As part of a WHYS special, pupils representing; Kampala in Uganda, Nairobi in Kenya, Ekatarinburg in Russia and Benghazi in Libya had a global conversation with a host school in London live on air.

The broadcast team were in Deptford Green School in New Cross, London. They were joined on air by their long term partner school, St Kizito, in Kampala Uganda, and other BBC World Class schools.

Bill Gates talks to pupils on World Have Your Say

Everyone was able to discuss their ideas with Bill Gates who now runs his own charitable foundation with his wife Melinda.

Mr Gates publishes an annual letter for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation setting out his priorities for the coming year and in preparation for the broadcast pupils also wrote 'letters to change the world'.

The focus of this global conversation was discrimination. The themes which emerged from the letters included sexual inequality, disability discrimination and homosexual intolerance in the pupil's respective countries.

Students in Libya spoke of how women were prevented from becoming vets and found it hard to take jobs in government. One London pupil said how he had seen a man being burnt alive in Nigeria for being homosexual.

Gates also heard from a young wheelchair user who had visited family in Bangladesh. He explained how difficult it had been to get around because of transport and accessibility issues, and pupils in Nairobi, also commented on the difficulties disabled people faced when attempting to find work.