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Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this week in Abuja, engaged in a dialogue with young leaders, nutrition experts, advocates, and Grammy Award winning musician Jon Batiste.
In this dynamic conversation, the participants exchanged transformative ideas that can address malnutrition through health, agriculture, and financing solutions. These include smartphones that can tell farmers which seeds to plant depending on the weather, multiple micronutrient supplements that reduce maternal anemia and save newborn lives, and cooking oil fortified with vitamin A to strengthen immune systems.
Throughout his opening remarks, Mr. Gates underscored the importance of reducing malnutrition especially in pregnant mothers and young children. He said: “vaccines saved millions of lives and improved the health of those children so they can achieve their whole potential. But now malnutrition is holding back their potential, because it can have lifelong effects. If not addressed it affects your brain, and it affects your body.”
He mentioned that solving malnutrition would not be simple, stressing that it “affects the most rural and low-income communities.” To really solve it, he said: “you’ve got to work with the health sector, agricultural sector, and educate people.”
Commenting on his upcoming meetings with philanthropists and government leaders in Nigeria, Mr. Gates outlined the important role that they can play in driving down the cost of nutrition interventions, designing education programs and making nutritious food more accessible.
Co-hosted by local partners TechnoServe and Nile University, and live streamed across Africa by Africa.com and Channels Television, Mr. Gates’ remarks were followed by an interactive Q&A session with the audience and reflections from Jon Batiste’s recent visit to Nigeria.
The event brought together nutrition experts and young people committed to addressing malnutrition and food insecurity across the continent and was designed to inspire transformative solutions to shape Africa’s future.
