Gates Foundation CEO: Nigeria making very important progress despite global aid cuts

Mark Suzman, Gates Foundation CEO, says Nigeria has made very important progress in healthcare despite recent cuts to global health, which have affected many countries around the world. 

Speaking to TheCable in New York before the foundation’s flagship Goalkeepers’ event on Tuesday, Suzman said Nigeria has the most significant poverty and malaria burden anywhere in the world, but added that the Nigerian government is taking some strong steps in the right direction.

According to him, “Nigeria’s size means it always, by numbers, makes a material difference to both global” and “certainly Africa-wide statistics”.

“In the global statistics, there are more very poor people in Nigeria than any other country on the planet right now, people living less than $2 a day. And as you say, whether it’s malaria incidents, whether it’s number of unvaccinated children, there are significant challenges in Nigeria, but at the same time, Nigeria has also made very important progress in a number of key areas,” he said. 

“The current government, especially in the area of health, Minister Pate has been a longstanding strong partner of the Foundation. And again, I want to stress that we work in alignment with the national priorities set by the government of Nigeria, but he has prioritised areas like vaccination, like a malaria campaign. 

“It’s also critical in Nigeria that that’s an argument partly triggered by the discussion over aid cuts, where the finance ministry and the presidency are also more directly engaged in investing in global health, and did provide some supplementary financing at the beginning of this year to make up for some of the shortfalls.”

Responding to question around how reducing malaria incidence increases GDP, Suzman said “sometimes the economic case for the benefits of health is more difficult to make or understand for politicians, because the real results, that economic boost you get, is a long-term economic boost”.

“It’s not as if you do a malaria prevention now and you immediately get a pickup in GDP,” he said.

“What you do is, if you have children growing up without being subject to malaria or dying of malaria, if you get children growing up with adequate nutrition and they’re fully vaccinated and healthy, you’re growing a robust, strong workforce of the future.

“The real returns will come when those children reach adulthood. But unfortunately, political electoral cycles don’t necessarily work very well with 20-year payoffs.”.

‘FIXING POVERTY, MALARIA IN NIGERIA WILL TAKE YEARS’

Suzman also explained that the foundation works with countries in Africa and Asia to help increase domestic resources to drive human capital development.

Speaking about Nigeria specifically, the foundation’s CEO said “Nigeria is also good example of a country that’s been facing significant challenges in terms of just the overall fiscal pressures it faces”.

“It’s been diversifying its national revenue. It now is raising more non-oil related tax revenues, but it’s still very challenging to make that. And so, that’s a broader area of discussion.

“We work with countries across South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa [on] how they can increase their domestic resource mobilisation, and then within those domestic resources, maximise the investments in what we call the human capital investments of health and education. 

“Yeah, I would agree that I think we have strong partnership with the government of Nigeria. And I think Nigeria is taking some strong steps in that direction, but the size of the disease burden and the poverty burden means that this is going to be a multiyear effort.”

In New York, Suzman also met with Vice President Kashim Shettima, who promised that Nigeria’s economy, which grew 4.23% in Q2 2025, will hit 7% in the next two years.