Gates stated this during his address at the National Economic Council meeting held at the Council Chambers of the State House.
He disclosed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had invested over $2.8bilion in Nigeria, quoting the figures as the Foundation’s largest commitment in all of Africa.
The philanthropist said while Nigeria’s economic leaders had made some difficult decisions by unifying the exchange rate, the next hurdle was to raise revenue, noting that although taxes were not popular, citizens would be inclined to pay if they saw the government spending the money to give them a better life.
Addressing the health sector, Gates said while the world had reduced the number of children who died before five by half through investments in primary health care, 2.2 million Nigerian children had never gotten a vaccine dose, pointing out that Nigeria spent only N3,000 on primary health care per person, in a year.
He further urged Nigeria to embrace the new generation of innovative crop varieties that have shorter growing periods, higher yields, and greater resistance to pests, as part of solutions to solve the food crisis in the country
Gates noted that even though Nigeria was the world’s largest producer of cassava, demand still exceeded the supply while calling for a speed-up of regulatory processes to approve the new crop varieties
He said to make the most of new crop varieties, Nigeria needs to speed up the regulatory process to approve them.