The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a commitment of $922 million over the next five years to address global nutrition and advance its mission that all women and children have the nutrition they need to live healthy and productive lives. The pledge, delivered at the first-ever United Nations Food Systems Summit, is the foundation’s largest nutrition commitment to date.

“Nutrition is fundamental to better health, and to an equitable COVID recovery. Yet both malnutrition rates and aid levels are moving in the wrong direction,” said Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “This funding will help more people around the world get the nutrition they need to live a healthy life, and we hope it serves as an invitation for more donors, foundations, governments, and private-sector leaders to build on today’s investment with more bold commitments.” 

“We will continue to prioritize and invest in nutrition because it is critical to reducing preventable deaths, improving maternal and child health and building resilience for the future,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. “While malnutrition accounts for nearly half of all child deaths, it still receives less than one percent of foreign aid—a trend that must change.” 

World hunger spiked in 2020, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent data estimates that around one-tenth of the global population, or 811 million people, were undernourished last year, and 3 billion people lacked access to healthy diets, largely due to lack of affordability. Undernutrition remains the underlying cause of nearly half of all child deaths, and the world is currently not on track to achieve targets for any nutrition indicators by 2030.

The estimated cost of malnutrition on the global economy could be as high as US $3.5 trillion per year, yet global nutrition continues to be an underinvested area of health and development, accounting for less than 1% of global foreign aid. National budget allocations in high-burden countries are similarly low. Yet, addressing malnutrition is one of the smartest investments governments and donors can make in the health and economic prosperity of people and nations, with every $1 invested in nutrition returning $16 back into the local economy.

The $922 million commitment over the next five years will advance the foundation’s systems approach, prioritizing efforts across food, health, and social protection systems to reach the most vulnerable. The foundation will continue to invest in proven approaches to improve nutrition for the world’s most vulnerable, including a focus on the 1,000-day window of opportunity—from conception through age 2. Nutrition is now prioritized through four key foundation portfolios:

Together, these strategies aim to address the unique role that health, food, and social protection systems can play in delivering both the food and the care that people need to live healthy and productive lives.

Accelerated investments in nutrition, food systems, and health systems must be a pillar of both the immediate and longer-term phases of the COVID-19 response. Recent impact modeling data predicts that without immediate action, there will be an additional 283,000 malnutrition-related deaths in children under 5 over the next three years, and 13.6 million more children under 5 will be wasted (underweight for their height) over the same period. As a result, we stand to lose a decade or more of progress on nutrition.

“With just nine years left to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, good nutrition is a driver of every global goal,” said Chris Elias, president of the Global Delivery Division at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “That’s why improved nutrition has always been a goal of our foundation, and will continue to be.” 

The UN Food Systems Summit and the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit are working collaboratively to advance solutions across systems with mutual recognition that malnutrition in all its forms is one of the biggest challenges we face to ensuring optimal health, resilience, and prosperity for all. N4G mobilization efforts have generated unprecedented and impactful commitments to improve global nutrition, but billions more are needed to put the world on track to meet global goals.

About the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
 

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman, under the direction of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.