Nigeria

We work with government of Nigeria and other partners to improve health outcomes, boost agricultural productivity, expand access to digital financial services, and empower women and other marginalized populations with greater economic opportunities.
Eno Ekpo, from Gender Mobile, speaks with students during a presentation on the University of Abuja campus in Abuja, Nigeria

At a glance

  • Nigeria has made significant progress in reaching its health goals, including recently eradicating wild polio from the country.
  • We work with the Nigerian government and other partners to help address a range of health issues, including family planning, nutrition, and strengthening primary health care and public health systems.
  • We support efforts to help smallholder farmers in Nigeria increase their yields and reduce food insecurity in the country.
  • We also support the government’s efforts to ensure that women, smallholder farmers, and other marginalized populations have access to digital financial services.

The latest updates on our work in Nigeria

A nurse distributes vials of the polio vaccine from a cold box to vaccinators during a polio vaccination campaign in the village of Nakera on the Niger/Nigeria border, Niger.
Article

Getting medical supplies where they’re needed most

Thanks to a new monetary guarantee, UNICEF can help lower-income countries more easily access urgently needed health care supplies. With a form of revolving credit plan, countries need no longer be hampered by typical months-long funding streams.
Yusuf Yusufari and Julie Frye
emergency operation centers
Article

How Emergency Operations Centers are aiding the COVID-19 response

Community-based Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) are as crucial to COVID-19 response as they have been in the fight against polio and other infectious diseases.
Article

COVID-19 is showing us how to improve health systems—sometimes by disrupting them

The pandemic further threatens weak health systems. Building stronger and more resilient health systems means focusing on women’s care and supporting health care workers.
Minji moon
Article

Day Zero: Inside Nigeria’s response to the 2016 polio outbreak

In 2016, as Nigeria prepared to announce two years without a case of wild poliovirus, two children in northern Nigeria tested positive for polio. In an instant, the country's track record of going 730 days polio-free was reset to zero.
Ryan Bell Feature Writer, Gates Foundation

Overview

We want all of Nigeria’s children, mothers, and families to be able to lead healthy and productive lives, and we want the country’s most marginalized people to have opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. To work toward these goals, we partner with the government, the private sector, and civil society organizations.

We aim to reduce preventable deaths in Nigeria by focusing on maternal and child health. We invest in programs that provide prenatal through postnatal care, as well as childhood immunization programs. We also support efforts to address common health challenges such as pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, and malnutrition, and we work to improve access to clean water and proper sanitation and hygiene. We look for ways to bolster primary health care delivery and integrate services to ensure a strong overall health system.

To help smallholder farmers boost their productivity, we invest in efforts to introduce higher-yield strains of important crops such as yams, cassava, sorghum, cowpeas, and rice; increase the productivity of livestock; and improve the tools and systems that are available to farmers. We also support research and policies that help improve the lives of smallholder farmers over the long term.

We support the government's goal of ensuring that women, smallholder farmers, and other marginalized populations have access to digital financial services, which can help them save, spend, and plan for the future more effectively.

A pharmacist in an urban public health center in Kaduna, Nigeria, discusses medication with customer.
A pharmacist in an urban public health center in Kaduna, Nigeria, discusses medication with customer.

Foundation grants: Nigeria

See grant commitments related to Nigeria made by the Gates Foundation and previous foundations of the Gates family (William H. Gates Foundation, Gates Library Foundation, and Gates Learning Foundation) from 1994 onward.

More about our work in Africa

Regional office

Our work in Nigeria is based out of our office in Abuja.

Fact sheet: Our work in Africa

A brief overview of our priorities in Africa.

Ideas

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