Billionaire's foundation partners Bill Gates to donate $100 million to fight undernutrition

According to media reports, the Federal Government has come out to laud the efforts of both the Aliko Dangote Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the eradication of Polio in the country.

Speaking on the efforts of the two foundations, Isaac Adewole, Minister for Health, expressed satisfaction that the country is now completely free of Polio, courtesy of the intervention of the two foundations, whilst assuring that the Federal Government will continue to ensure that the country remains Polio free always.

The two foundations also announced last week, at a joint press conference in Abuja, a combined $100 million (N30 billion) commitment over the next five years aimed at putting an end to undernutrition in Nigeria.

According to Asoko Insights, this commitment is expected to improve the lives of at least 5 million families by 2020.

“Nutrition is one of the highest impact investments we can make in Nigeria’s future growth and prosperity. We know that well-nourished children are more likely to grow up to be healthy, fend off preventable diseases, achieve more in school and even earn higher income as adults,” said Bill Gates.

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“This partnership builds on our foundation’s strong commitment to Nigeria – one of several countries where we are working closely with the government, the private sector and civil society to improve health and development outcomes.”

“In the spirit of our new partnership, we encourage even more deliberate and significant commitments from the Government of Nigeria at all levels to step up investments in nutrition. It is time to make strategic investments in interventions to eliminate malnutrition in Nigeria. “This will be achieved through a massive scale-up of interventions, matched with effective coordination of efforts and innovative sustainable solutions. “We have to ensure that children who are already malnourished receive help and are prevented from dying while we improve the conditions that led to them being malnourished in the first place’,” said Aliko Dangote.

Despite being the largest economy on the African continent, Nigeria still has the highest number of stunted children in Africa and the second highest in the world.

At least one in five Nigerian children is acutely malnourished and more than on in three children suffer from stunted growth, according to Asoko Insights.