Local entrepreneur Bill Gates was in Paris today, tagging graffiti art by Artof Popof and Dag to publicize the launch of Living Proof, a site that advocates for the benefits of foreign aid.

“I’d love it if everyone in France could go to Africa and see the great things going on there,” Gates told AFP, adding: “It will take President (Nicolas) Sarkozy’s leadership and creativity to make sure that these issues that relate to the poorest countries stay on the agenda.” (See the full slideshow of Gates in tagger action.)

The Gates Foundation, in collaboration with ONE, an aid advocacy group, is going public with the success stories of providing support to developing countries as a way of keeping governmental aid levels up while even G8 countries struggle with deficits. On Tuesday, Gates will hit Berlin to make the same argument.

Living Proof (available in English, French, and German) makes a number of claims to dispel the notion that foreign aid simply flows into a bottomless bucket of need. “The use of antiretroviral treatment for HIV-positive pregnant women has averted an estimated 200,000 new HIV infections in children over the last 12 years, the vast majority since 2005,” says the site on its Facts & Figures page. In Africa, it points out, measles deaths dropped by 92 percent between 2000 and 2008, thanks to vaccines.

But advances are not just about biomedical technology. As Melinda Gates writes on the Foundation blog:

Take breastfeeding, for example. Simply put, breastfeeding is a lifesaving act. We know exclusive breastfeeding – when the newborn is fed only with breast milk and nothing else in the first six months – is one of the best ways to save baby’s lives.

When I was in Dowa, Malawi last yearI visited the Dowa District Hospital. Exclusive breastfeeding is a core project of the government, one supported by Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives Program. The initiative encourages women to give birth in a health clinic and then provides them with three home visits from healthcare workers, in the weeks following the birth. These visits help mothers learn about how to care for their children, including exclusively breastfeeding. Programs like these aren’t created in a laboratory, yet help mothers realize they can significantly improve the health of their newborns without any new technologies.

Of course, all the messaging in the world can’t address the ADHD nature of the internet. Commenters on the Twitpic of his tagging were more excited to note that Gates in left-handed and “your tie actually looks like a plate, nice!”