The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday that it will commit $7 billion to Africa over the next four years, as Bill Gates warned that the crisis in Ukraine is reducing the amount of aid flowing to the continent.
The Foundation’s commitment, which is a 40% increase over the amount spent over the previous four years, will target projects to address hunger, disease, poverty and gender inequality.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, will receive the largest share.
Aid groups in Africa are grappling with the diversion of funding to Ukraine, and as Russia’s invasion raises global commodity prices, affecting aid operations.
“European budgets are deeply affected by the Ukraine war and so right now the trend for aid is not to go up,” the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp ( MSFT.O ) told reporters at the University of Nairobi during a visit to Kenya .
“If you take all the aid (to Africa) including all the climate aid – we’re going to have some years where it’s probably going to go down.”
Kenya and much of East Africa are suffering from the worst drought in four decades.
Drought, exacerbated by conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, has pushed more than 10 million people in the region “to the brink of a hunger crisis,” US-based Christian aid group World Vision said this week.
The United Nations expects famine to be declared in parts of Somalia this year.
After meeting with Kenyan President William Ruto, Gates said on Wednesday that the Foundation would set up a regional office in Nairobi.
“Our foundation will continue to support solutions in health, agriculture and other critical sectors — and the systems to get them out of the lab and into the people who need them,” Gates, who runs the foundation with his ex-wife Melinda French. Gates said in a statement.
The Foundation in 2021 gave away $6.7 billion in philanthropic support and last week pledged $1.4 billion to help the world’s smallholder farmers tackle climate change.
