AfDB president Donald Kaberuka
African Development Bank (AfDB) group president Donald Kaberuka on Tuesday met with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chairperson and trustee Bill Gates to discuss ways to work together to improve the development of Africa.
During the meeting, Kaberuka and Gates discussed issues ranging from vaccine delivery to sanitation, and from education to financial inclusion, the AfDB said in a statement on Wednesday.
Ebola was also discussed, with the spread of the virus having not only highlighted the need for improved healthcare systems, but also having underscored the issue of the lack of reliable statistics.
Gathering data was a key focus of both organisations.
One area of intense interest was improved disease surveillance, with key officials from the AfDB having shared ideas with high-level foundation executives on how such a system could be structured to best serve populations across the continent.
“One of the reasons I am here to talk to the foundation is to see how we can use these new technologies. It is something you do extraordinarily well,” Kaberuka told foundation employees after the meeting with Gates.
He further pointed out that while many sectors in the African economy were booming and employment was on the rise, not all people were seeing the improvements.
He said strategic partnerships and focused efforts were key to resolving this situation.
“As Bill and I were discussing this morning, in a world of increasingly scarce public resources, but plenty of private resources, how do we combine them to maximise both?” Kaberuka asked, adding that this was a question both organisations were determined to answer with an increasing sense of urgency.