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The fight against malnutrition has found an unlikely ally in Bill Gates, who’s convinced that the key to unlocking a hunger-free world lies in the fields. By enhancing agricultural productivity, Gates argues, we can ensure that everyone has access to nutritious food, starting with the most vulnerable regions like Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the Nutrivision 2024 summit, a vibrant gathering of young minds at Nile University Abuja, Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered a powerful address on Tuesday, outlining his strategy for conquering malnutrition in Africa.
To tackle malnutrition, a major obstacle to unlocking human potential, Gates advocated for a two-pronged approach: enhancing food availability at affordable prices and leveraging advanced seed technologies to boost crop yields.
“If you are malnourished you are at much high risk, if you do get malaria or diarrhoea, you are double at risk of dying of those things. But even if you survive you are not going to do as well as you deserve to do in your education or any of your activities.
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“We see this malnutrition stunting which means height for age and part of the way we are going to solve this is by improving agricultural productivity. Malnutrition, part of it, is having access to low cost foods, particularly milk.
“So, making food more available at low cost, using better seeds and understating that even understanding that with the climate change, we can come up with seeds that often contrive with less water or even in cases where you have too much water and be able to still be highly productive,” Gates said.
Gates expressed concern that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to grapple with widespread undernourishment, with rates stubbornly refusing to decline. He also bemoaned the exacerbating impact of high inflation in Nigeria and other countries, which is further limiting access to quality food and hindering efforts to combat malnutrition.
The billionaire philanthropist highlighted a paradox in the fight against malnutrition: numerous children have enough food to eat, yet their diets are often misaligned, preventing their bodies from absorbing essential nutrients, and resulting in malnourishment.
