Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has explained how Nigeria can end its regime of food importation and become a major foreign exchange earner in food exportation.
Gates spoke on Tuesday, while answering a question on financing mechanisms the Nigerian government could adopt towards funding large-scale public health interventions and other programmes, at the Nutrivision 2024, a Pan-African youth dialogue on nutrition in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The billionaire stressed that the Federal Government can use the scare dollars spent on food importation to address other areas of needs.
He said agricultural productivity, particularly in rural and northern areas, is crucial for improving incomes.
The philanthropist also said by leveraging digital technologies and adopting improved seed varieties, Nigeria could trigger an agricultural “miracle,” which would not only benefit the country but also address issues of equity and nutrition across the country.
“Nigeria today is a net food importer and yet, given the geography, if the right credit facilities and advice to farmers, soil surveys, things are available, there is the opportunity for Nigeria to more than double its food output, which would be pretty transformative, because it would mean that you would be a net food exporter”, Gates said.
“Instead of having to use very scarce dollars, particularly the current exchange rate to go buy food, you are actually bringing dollars in”.
Gates further lamented that tax collection in the country is very low.
He said the low tax collection poses a challenge to adequately financing critical sectors such as health and education.
The American added that for citizens to gain confidence in the government’s ability to deliver quality healthcare, there must be a commitment to ensure that the funding of health programmes is well-managed.
“Over time, there are plans for Nigeria to fund the government more than it does today. The actual tax collection in Nigeria is actually pretty low,” Gates said.
“If citizens want the education and the health things, as they develop the confidence that these programmes can be very well run, and our foundation is involved with a lot of the exemplars that are showing the way in terms of making sure the money is spent really well, running a very efficient primary health care system where the employees are doing great work, the centres are where they should be, you don’t have underloaded centres or overloaded centres.”
According to Gates, building credibility in health programmes would encourage citizens to support increased funding for primary healthcare as the country achieves greater fiscal flexibility.
“It’s exciting that we are driving the credibility of those health programmes and so that the citizens will feel like primary health care is amongst the priorities that should be very funded as you get some fiscal flexibility,” he added.
