The Gates Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, has announced intentions to spend $7 billion over the next four years to combat hunger, disease, gender inequality, and poverty in Africa.
The nonprofit organization’s latest $7-billion donation is its largest since the addition of Zimbabwean billionaire and Econet Group Founder Strive Masiyiwa to its board of directors, and it comes nearly eight months after the foundation committed $5 million to Butterfly Network.
Gates, the billionaire Microsoft cofounder who established The Gates Foundation and is presently ranked the world’s fifth-richest man with a $113-billion net worth, made the announcement after visiting primary healthcare centers, leading medical and agricultural research institutes, and smallholder farms in Nairobi, Kenya.
He stated that the foundation would invest more than $7 billion over the next four years to help African countries and institutions develop and execute creative solutions to hunger, disease, gender inequity, and poverty.
“The big global challenges we face are persistent. But we have to remember, so are the people solving them,” said Gates. “Our foundation will continue to support solutions in health, agriculture, and other critical areas—and the systems to get them out of the labs and to the people who need them.”
The $7-billion commitment comes at a time when the world is grappling with overlapping global crises that are worsening hunger, malnutrition, and poverty for millions. It is in addition to the foundation’s existing funding to multilateral organizations such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
The Gates Foundation has distributed more than $80 billion in grants since its inception 22 years ago, not including the $7 billion just earmarked for Africa, with the annual payout continually increasing year after year.
