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By Victor Emeruwa
“I engage in African health because, with the right partnership, we can get a lot done.” Bill Gates
It appears the rest of the developing world is worried about the slow pace of Africa’s economic growth, the rise in conflict, extreme poverty, governance issues, political uncertainty and a multiplicity of challenges that confronts the continent. For many reasons but most importantly, Africa is called the next frontier for trade, opportunities and investments because of its youthful population. This may be considered as a burden because of the lack of government capacity to cater for the young population, but aid organizations see it as an opportunity not just for the continent but for the survival of the world.
As political leaders in Africa struggle to steer the continent on the path of sustainable economic growth, peace and development, aid and development organizations are fanning the hope that the youthful continent will one day rise above its challenges. At the forefront of the social investments in Africa is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest private philanthropic organizations in the world, spending about $2 billion a year in Africa alone, essentially to improve health and agriculture, and providing access to vaccines.
Bill Gates believes every dollar doled out by his foundation and many donor organizations has counted in cutting childhood death by half, death by malaria and HIV are half of what they were at the peak of those pandemic. So, in a way, social investment in Africa is easing the burden on the continent plagued with a plethora of challenges. Still, much more needs to be done, and this has to be fostered through building stronger and more resilient social investment partnerships that will trigger greater prosperity and peace for the continent.
The same shared value in partnership building for development in Africa is what the Sterling One Foundation is championing across the continent through alliance-building across government, civil society, business community and private enterprises.
“The days of working in silos has to end,” Peju Ibekwe, Sterling One Foundation team lead, argues that all interested parties in Africa’s development must get into a common room and forge a stronger alliance for solutions, rather than working from one corner of the table. “We can achieve more if we build the right partnerships and collaborations,” Ibekwe said.
To begin with, it should be succinctly clear that the challenges of Africa cannot be easily wished away; it will not be solved by external forces alone, no single donor funds, no matter how huge, will solve the continent’s complex challenges; there has to be significant investment in strategic collaborations and partnership-building. Perhaps this has been the missing link in reaching the United Nations target development goals. Africa has to own its own challenges as well as its own homegrown solutions, looking to the west alone for solutions will only create perpetuation of its already compounded dilemma, looking inwards and working with partners for broad-thinking strategy and social investments appears to be a more practical solution to fast-tracking development goals attainment.
Through its Africa Social Impacts Summits, Sterling One Foundation is galvanizing necessary and deliberate action towards the most essential component of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals: Partnerships to achieve the goals. In the wisdom of the United Nations, when the Millennium Development Goals ended with no significant attainment for African countries, the UN introduced additional components and capped it with the goal to build corporate and institutional alliances. Goal 17 of the Sustainable Development framework is designed to be the propelling force required to achieve greater result.
Ever wondered why Africa is of critical importance to the world? One of the reasons is the continents youthful population. At the moment in the global space, Africa has the most youthful population. Gates thinks Africa’s opportunities are its youthful population, which is why his foundations aid is targeted at health, education, and agriculture, the very base on which the young people require to stay alive and healthy, have access to education and good nutrition. “Sub-Saharan Africa is really where the world’s creativity is about helping with education, health and governance and agricultural productivity; just take climate change, if all you wanted to do was help with climate change, you would end up working with smallholder farmers in Africa; that’s where over 80 per cent of all the suffering caused by climate change in this century is, smallholder farmers in Africa,” Bill Gates said in an interview with The Washington Post at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
Targeting social investments in the world’s most youthful population is a smart way to save the world from aging out. This justifies Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual $2 billion in aid money in the essential components that keeps the youthful African population thriving in hope.
Just like the BMGF pumps hope in Africa’s youthful population, Sterling One Foundation also targets social investments in youth lead social businesses and innovations that can make impacts on a larger scale, this is done through creation of a meeting point for social investments or businesses that can help move the continent close to reaching the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
While philanthropic and donor community play their path, politicians in charge of governance should put their words to concrete achievable actions, especially in ensuring that policies are attuned to development and that politics are aligned to the progress expected. One of Africa’s biggest undoing is not getting its politics right. If aids fund is to work for good, politics must align to development as other stakeholders in the civil society, business community, private sector and government work together in forging a common ground through sustainable partnerships.
