Global Development Division

Global Development Division

The Global Development division of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was established with the aim to identify and fund high impact solutions that are able to help hundreds of millions of people lift themselves out of poverty, become self sufficient and eventually build better lives.

At present, worldwide nearly 2.5 billion people live under $2/day with more than 1 billion suffering from chronic hunger. Even the basic resources of food, water, shelter, and sanitation are in short supply for these people. Naturally, education and healthcare remain to be unaffordable luxuries for them. The Global development division works towards reaching to these people who are most in need.    

The Global Development division has the following sub divisions –

1. Agricultural Development 

This program is aimed at helping farming families to increase their food and crops production in a sustainable way, and thus helping them with being able to sell more crops. With focus primarily on Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, more than $2 billion have been committed to agricultural development efforts in these areas. The approach is based on the following principles:

1. Listening to farmers and addressing their specific needs
2. Increasing farm productivity
3. Fostering sustainable agricultural practices
4. Achieving greater impact with partners

Investments have been made in the following strategic areas -  

1. Research & Development
2. Agricultural Policies
3. Livestock
4. Access and Market Systems
5. Strategic Advocacy and partnerships

1. Emergency response

This program is aimed at reduceing disease, suffering and death due to sudden and unpredictable natural disasters and complex emergencies which affect several countries across the world from time to time. It also works to improve the speed and performance of first responders in the first critical hours of an emergency. Areas of focus are –

1. Emergency Relief – includes Rapid onset emergencies, complex emergencies and slow onset emergencies
2. Strengthening the capacity of emergency responders
3. Innovation and learning

1. Family Planning

This division of global development aims to bring access to high-quality contraceptive information, supplies and services to an additional 120 million women and girls in the poorest countries by 2020 with the long-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning. Investments have been made in the following focus areas –