Bill Gates, chairman of the Gates Foundation, has criticised Nigeria’s level of public health investment, describing it as insufficient to address the country’s longstanding healthcare challenges.
Speaking during a media roundtable on Wednesday, June 4, Gates said the low budgetary allocation to health is a major factor behind the country’s high rates of maternal and child mortality. He revealed that he had raised the issue directly with President Bola Tinubu, urging the Nigerian government to increase its health spending.
“Well, the amount of money Nigeria spends on health care is very, very small,” Gates said. “I don’t know why you would have expected that number (referring to maternal mortality) to go down. If a mother delivers at home, there are certain complications that you can’t solve. So what countries like India do is they drive delivery into centres where they can give C-sections. But that takes money.”
Although the Nigerian national assembly added N300 billion to the 2025 health budget in February, raising the total allocation to N2.48 trillion, or 5.18 percent of the national budget, Gates said more investment is necessary if meaningful change is to be achieved.
Gates also addressed concerns about diminishing global health funding, particularly from the United States, which has historically been a leading contributor. When asked whether the Gates Foundation would fill the gap left by U.S. cuts, he said no private organisation could replace the scale of funding previously provided by the U.S. government.
“The problem with the Gates Foundation is we don’t have some special bucket of money,” he said. “We spend more every year, and all my money will be spent. And so no matter what the other people do, it’s the same amount of money.”
Gates noted that in some cases, the foundation steps in to help when essential medicines are left unused or trials are abandoned. However, he emphasized that the foundation’s funding is not a replacement for international public sector contributions.
“There’s nobody who can match that US government money. And the European money is all coming down. We have like a 40% decrease from Germany and the UK,” he added, attributing the European funding cuts to economic pressures, such as war spending and ageing populations.
“I’m very upset about it. We’ll have more HIV deaths, malaria deaths, and maternal deaths. There’s just no denying that that money was being well spent. And there’s no alternate source that matches up to what was available,” he said.
Last month, Gates announced plans to give away nearly all his wealth, an estimated $200 billion, over the next two decades, with a significant portion earmarked for Africa
