The 2019 Goalkeepers Summit by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York, which coincided with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), was a forum for American business magnate Bill Gates, Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote and others to chart the way forward for humanity, reports OLUKOREDE YISHAU from New York.
Dangote Group President Aliko Dangote and Microsoft founder Aliko Dangote became friends some years back. Dangote runs the Dangote Foundation; Gates and his wife Melinda run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With challenges such as poverty, open defecation, education and health as focus, Gates had to look beyond the developed world to effect change. In Dangote they found an ally.
Through its Gatekeepers Report, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation monitor the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) progress. This report was a major talking point at the 2019 Goalkeepers events in New York, where awards were given to people who helped in moving towards the achievements of the SDGs.
Gates urged governments across the world to focus more on primary healthcare development and education as a means of achieving the SDGs. Using Nigeria as an example, he condemned uneven development in societies and called for sufficient spread of developmental efforts. Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim also aligned with Gates on the need for inequality to be ended.
The 2019 report shows that Nigeria’s health indicators have improved. In the late 1990s, it was estimated that two of three Nigerians lived in poverty. That represented 68 per cent. Twenty years later, the figure has dropped to 32 per cent of the population or one in three Nigerians.
Sixty-four per cent of children used to suffer from malnutrition in 2005. This went down to 37 per cent last year, according to figures supplied by the foundation.
Only about half of Nigerians used unsafe or unimproved sanitation in 2018 compared to 80 per cent in 1990.
As good as these improvements are, Nigeria still ranks 43rd of 52 African countries on a recently compiled sustainable development goal index. The implication is that the country has gone 47 per cent towards achieving sustainable development goals. The Gatekeepers Report lists the country as one of those who will not meet the SDGs 2030 deadline.
Gatekeepers’ report 2018 says poverty is concentrating on just a handful of very fast-growing countries. Nigeria still has the second-highest number of deaths of children aged five and under. It tags behind India.
The 2019 report says life is better for the boy-child. “No matter where you are born, your life will be harder if you are born a girl,” the report says.
It adds that across sub-Saharan Africa, girls have an average of two fewer years of education than boys. In Nigeria, according to the World Bank, girls get an average of 7.6 years, and boys get 8.7 years.
The report recommends that “human capital investments should be designed to reach girls and prioritise those countries and districts that have to make up the most ground”.
The report also observes that education is not enough to bridge the gender divide.
“In some countries where girls tend to be well-educated they are still underrepresented in the workforce because they also face discriminatory norms and policies.
“Africa’s youth population (people aged 0 to 24 years) is booming while the rest of the world is shrinking,” says the report.
The median age across Africa is 18; it is 35 in North America and 47 in Japan.
The report also shows that in Nigeria, child mortality rate reduced from 109 per 1,000 births in 2017 to 104 per 1,000 live births in 2018 while child stunting reduced from 38.14 per cent in 2017 to 36.74 per cent last year.
Death from malaria, the report shows, reduced from about 166 per 1,000 in 2017 to 160.72 per 1,000. Cases of tuberculosis reduced from 351.8 per 100,000 to 344.2 in 2018.
Instances of Neglected Tropical Diseases, according to the report, went down from 52,566 per 100,000 in 2017 to 50,584 last year. On a sad note, the number of people living in poverty increased from 66.83 million in 2017 to 67.48 million in 2018.
The report shows that Measles-Containing-Vaccine second dose (MCV2) was low at 39.27 per cent; Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) immunisation coverage was 36.39 per cent.
The report also reveals that the vaccine coverage for Pneumoccocal conjugate vaccines (PCV3) was at 35.67 per cent.
The Gates in the 2019 Gatekeepers’ Report entitled: Examining inequality 2019 say: “Gaps between countries, districts, and boys and girls prove that the world’s investments in development aren’t reaching everyone.
“Using new sub-national data, the report uncovers the vast inequalities within countries that are masked by averages.
“Where you’re born is still the biggest predictor of your future and no matter where you’re born, life is harder if you’re a girl.
“Despite gains in female educational attainment, opportunities for girls are limited by social norms, discriminatory laws and policies, and gender-based violence.
“As we write, billions of people are projected to miss the targets that we all agreed represent a decent life.”
The foundation called for a new approach to development, targeting the poorest people in the countries and districts that need to make up the most ground to address persistent inequality.
“Governments should prioritise primary healthcare to deliver a health system that works for the poorest.
“Government should also deliver digital governance to ensure that governments are responsive to their least-empowered citizens, and more support for farmers to help them adapt to climate change’s worst effects,” it said.
It added: “The report is designed to track progress in achieving the Global Goals, highlight examples of success, and inspire leaders around the world to accelerate their efforts.
“The goal is to identify both what’s working and where we’re falling short,” it said.
Speaking at a panel discussion with Gates last Wednesday at the fourth Gatekeepers Summit at the Lincoln Centre, New York, Dangote said he hoped to give out a chunk of his wealth like Gates. He is estimated to be worth $9.2billion.
Dangote praised Gates for his love for Nigeria: “When I started my foundation in 1994, I never realised we had this massive challenge in the health sector.
“Really, it was mind-boggling when we had this agreement to collaborate with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and that really opened my eyes to realise that there are a lot of challenges in health.
“At that time I didn’t have the opportunity of meeting Bill but meeting Bill changed me into a different person. This is somebody that has nothing to do with us in Africa or Nigeria but he is putting his money and his soul into everything.
“He is very committed to helping humanity and that really surprises me a lot and I realised that he is a simple person and I never knew Bill would be this simple. He is a very soft-spoken guy and kind-hearted.
“It is very difficult to find people like Bill in this world. Bill, we are very grateful and I can assure you that with my association with Bill, my only prayer is that in the next few years, I will try and give my chunk of wealth to charity.”
Gates, who noted that a place where a person is born could determine how long the person could live, thanked Dangote for connecting him with the governors in the North.
He added that Africa’s richest man proved to him that one could make better impact by reaching out to powerful politicians in charge of policy.
Gates said: “Aliko knows people; he has relationships and he is willing to reach out to people. He says ‘let’s reach out to the governor, let’s talk to him about this’ and the next thing you know, we’ve got the governor on the phone, talking.
“So, this ability to reach out and draw on the broad relationships that Aliko has developed…you know I am pretty shy about calling people. I just want to mail them my charts.
“So what has come out now is that Aliko and I do conference calls with six of the governors from the northern states where we look at vaccine coverage.
“It is a big challenge but I’ve drawn from Aliko’s communication skills and he is not afraid to call anyone. Everyone likes to talk to him.”
Gates said his new task was to close the gaps between nations towards achieving the SGDs by ensuring that all had access to quality health and education.
Dangote said his company wanted the government to make it mandatory for companies to fortify all rice products consumed in the country.
He said Nigerians eat rice in the morning, afternoon and night, adding that fortifying rice with the right vitamins would help combat malnutrition.
“At the Aliko Dangote Foundation, we have what we call the Nutrition Integrated Programme, of which we are trying to make sure we take out two million children from malnutrition,” Dangote said at the Goalkeepers Summit.
“Right now, Dangote is also in the process of rice milling. We are setting up about one million tonnes of rice, and all our rice will apply these nutritious vitamins.
“The main food we eat in Nigeria is rice; people eat rice in the morning, they eat rice in the afternoon, they eat rice at night.
“With this, we are now trying to introduce this, and also we are going to the government to make it mandatory for all the rice we consume in Nigeria to be fortified. This will help quite a lot,” Dangote said.
He added that his company was the first in Africa to begin fortification of sugar, which he said has become the norm.
Dangote said about two million children are malnourished in Nigeria — a trend the foundation is working to bring to zero.
He appreciated the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for bringing companies in Nigeria together to sign up to food products fortification of battle malnutrition.
In an interview before the summit, Gates said: “Nigeria is a super-important country and one that the foundation has an office there. We did a lot of work in Nigeria on polio and we learned a lot doing that. Nigeria has gone almost three years now without having a polio case.
“The biggest priority we have, although making absolutely sure we’re done with polio remains a big priority, now we’re able to focus even more on the primary healthcare system.
“If I had one wish for Nigeria, it would be that the quality and funding of the primary health care system would achieve the level of some other countries that are lower-income but have done a better job with the primary healthcare system. So, it definitely is doable.
“In Nigeria for a lot of the work we do there we’re partnered with Aliko Dangote, who helps us understand who the good partners are and exactly how we can reach out to groups like the traditional leaders and get them involved in these efforts as well.
“So, Nigeria is important. I’m hopeful about Nigeria. As you see in the report, the disparities within Nigeria are quite stark.
“Also, one challenge that Nigeria has is that the amount of money that the government raises domestically is quite small compared to other countries. A lot of countries at that level will be raising closer to 15 per cent of GDP and Nigeria is one of the lowest in the world down at about six per cent. And so, it is a huge challenge that when you want to fund infrastructure, health, education, all those things, that over time the tax collection, the domestic resources are going to have to go up quite a bit.
“That’s a long-term effort and I think partly by making sure the current resources are spent well like on primary healthcare, you gain the credibility that the citizens will say, okay, we want more of these things. If we don’t raise the quality, you can get into a trap where they don’t feel like paying the taxes actually has that much impact, and so they’re not supportive of that.
“So, we’re working hard. I mentioned we do videoconferences with state governors. If we can make the six states into exemplars, then these practices can be extended to all 18 of the northern states. There are best practices down in the south as well that we can learn from as well.
“Building on what we were able to achieve with polio and the relationships we’ve built there and our commitment, starting with primary healthcare, we think that Nigeria can tackle its inequality.”
The awards
The summit witnessed the presentation of awards to India Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reducing open defecation.
Modi, in less than five years, led a mission which ensured that 600 million people stopped open defecation in one of the world’s most populous country.
Gates said: “Managing human waste is one of the world’s oldest and toughest challenges and I will say most leaders are not willing to talk about it, in part because the solutions aren’t that easy, but we do have to talk about it.
“We hear a lot about malaria and we should, because it’s devastating and we are making progress. But sanitation-related illnesses kill more kids every year than malaria does.
“In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Swachh Bharat Mission, a programme with the very ambitious goal of eliminating open defecation in India.
“Before the project, more than half a billion people were defecating in the open, but today, just five years later, thanks to the leadership of hundreds of thousands of people in communities across India, the vast majority now have access to safe sanitation.
“This progress is critical to achieving SDG 6 for water and sanitation, which is lagging far behind.”
Gates added that India is already serving as a model for other countries.
The foundation’s Campaign Award was presented to Aya Chebbi, the first African Union Youth Envoy, for her work promoting youth empowerment, peace building, and non-violent mobilisation in Africa.
Chebbi said: “We live in a world where politicians fuel xenophobia and violence and violate national and international laws, and even censor the only space we have to breathe, the internet.
“We live in a world where it has become acceptable to trade human rights for sanitary projects; the reality we live in is dangerous. But you know what, a wise man told me the power of the people will always be more powerful than people in power.
“When young people promise, young people deliver; the world we want is borderless and the future we want is about dignity and freedom, and our generation will continue to be radical, disruptive and challenge the status quo.”
The foundation’s Changemaker Award was presented to youth activist Payal Jangid for her fight against child labor and child marriage in India.
The Progress Award went to Gregory Rockson, co-founder and CEO of mPharma, for his work to increase access to high-quality drugs across community pharmacies in five African countries.
