Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to spend $5b on Africa in 5 years

Bill Gates, founder of Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, said in Addis Ababa that the foundation has earmarked 5 billion dollars to be spent in Africa in the next five years.

He said the spending has become imperative because the foundations biggest priority is health and a lot still need to be done.

“Health remains’ the priority for the work of the foundation in Africa,” Gates said.

“Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is faced with a struggle to bring down the rate of new HIV infections in the world’s poorest continent,” he said.

He said Ethiopia country is one of the biggest recipients of funds from the foundation.

Gate noted that halving the child mortality rate from 1990 to the present, was great.

He, however, observed that the presence of pneumonia, diarrhoea and other illnesses still leaves far too many children dying.

Gates noted that much had been achieved on HIV/AIDS and such as an increase in the number of people under treatment for the disease to 12 million globally.

But he noted that two-thirds of new HIV/AIDS infections continued to take place in Africa.

“It is a mixed situation, as stakeholder’s we have a challenge to bring the numbers down,” he said.

The philanthropic organisation formed in 2000 by the world’s richest man has an endowment of more than 40 billion and distributed grants of 4 billion dollars in 2014.

Gate observed that the slumping commodity prices have posed serious challenges to economic and political stability in some African countries, and have slowed the momentum of poverty reduction.

He said even at the commodity slump, the direction is largely going the right way.

The founder said that the infrastructure, education and health investment during the boom years had laid solid foundations.