Development Co‑operation Profiles: Gates Foundation
Table of contents
The Gates Foundation is a United States-based foundation established in 2000, and it is one of the largest private foundations working for development. Since 2006, the foundation has also benefited from Warren Buffett’s support.
Guided by its mission to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life, the Gates Foundation collaborates with grantees and partner organisations across the globe to reduce disease and poverty. For the next 20 years, the foundation’s strategic vision is built around three pillars: improving the health and well-being of mothers and babies, fighting infectious diseases, and expanding economic opportunity. In low and middle-income countries, the foundation focuses on addressing health and development priorities, including health, nutrition, vaccines, agricultural development, education and digital public infrastructure. Its approach to grantmaking emphasises collaboration, innovation, and results. The foundation has seven divisions: Africa & India Offices, gender equality, global development, global growth and opportunity, global health, global policy and advocacy, and the US Program. This profile concerns only activities administered by the global divisions.
This profile presents verified data on development assistance allocations. See the Development Co-operation Profiles.
The Gates Foundation provided USD 5.5 billion for development in 2024 through its cross-border funding. Compared to 2023, this amount represents a decrease of 2.3% in real terms. Grants represented 100% of the Gates Foundation’s gross disbursements.
The Gates Foundation provided most of its development finance bilaterally in 2024. Gross bilateral development finance was 88.4% of total disbursements. Of this amount, 17.2% was channelled through multilateral organisations (earmarked contributions).
In 2024, the Gates Foundation channelled its bilateral development finance mostly through universities, research institutes or think tanks (USD 1.7 billion), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (USD 1.4 billion) and public-private partnerships (PPPs) and private sector (USD 838.6 million).
In 2024, the Gates Foundation provided USD 1.5 billion to the multilateral system. Of this, USD 635.4 million was core multilateral ODA (11.6% of total ODA), while USD 831.8 million was non-core contributions earmarked for a specific country, region, theme or purpose. 47% per cent of total development finance was channelled through UN organisations, UN funds and programmes and the World Bank.
The UN system received USD 583.4 million from the Gates Foundation in 2024. The most significant UN recipients were the World Health Organisation (WHO) (USD 317 million), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (USD 154.4 million) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) (USD 41.1 million).
In 2024, civil society organisations (CSOs) received USD 1.4 billion of the Gates Foundation’s gross bilateral finance, of which 23% was directed to developing country-based CSOs. Overall, 1.4% of total bilateral development finance was allocated to CSOs as core support, while 26.6% was earmarked to specific projects or programmes. From 2023 to 2024, the combined core and earmarked contributions for CSOs increased as a share of bilateral philanthropic development finance, from 25.9% to 28%.
Learn more about the DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Aid.
In 2024, the Gates Foundation’s development finance was primarily focused on Africa and Asia (excluding the Middle East). USD 1.9 billion was allocated to Africa and USD 764.7 million to Asia (excluding the Middle East), accounting respectively for 39.4% and 15.8% of gross bilateral development finance. A total of USD 2.1 billion (43.6%) was unallocated by region, mainly including multi-regional programmes, core support to multilateral organisations, and research grants.
In 2024, 29.8% of gross development finance went to the top 10 recipients, most notably Nigeria (6.1%), India (5.8%), and Pakistan (4.3%).
Least developed countries (LDCs) and other low-income countries (LICs) received respectively USD 750.6 million (15.5%) and USD 3 million (0.1%) of the Gates Foundation’s gross disbursements in 2024. The Gates Foundation allocated the highest share (20.9%) of its bilateral development finance to lower middle-income countries (LIMCs) in 2024, followed by LDCs (15.5%), noting that USD 2.9 billion (60.7%) was unallocated by income group.
The Gates Foundation allocated USD 496 million of its development finance to land-locked developing countries in 2024, and USD 4.5 million to small island developing states (SIDS) in 2024. The main SIDS recipients are Haiti, Guinea-Bissau and Papua New Guinea.
In 2024, the Gates Foundation provided USD 100 thousand of gross development finance to Ukraine to respond to the impacts of Russia’s full-scale invasion, a 58% decrease from 2023 in real terms.
Support to contexts with high and extreme fragility reached USD 1.4 billion in 2024, representing 29.4% of the Gates Foundation’s bilateral development finance. Of this, contexts with extreme fragility received a total of USD 215.7 million.
Learn more about the OECD States of Fragility platform.
In 2024, the largest allocations (82.6% of bilateral contributions) by the Gates Foundation went to social infrastructure and services, with a strong focus on support to health and population (USD 3.7 billion). The second largest bilateral allocation went to production sectors (USD 428.5 million), focusing on agriculture, forestry, fishing (USD 428.3 million). This was followed by economic infrastructure and services (USD 316.6 million) and humanitarian assistance (USD 33.1 million).
In the period 2023-2024, the Gates Foundation committed 40.4% of screened bilateral allocable development finance to gender equality and women’s empowerment, compared to 42.5% in 2021-2022 and a private philanthropic average of 33.2% in 2023-2024. This is equal to USD 2.2 billion of screened bilateral allocable contributions in support of gender equality on average per year. In addition:
The share of screened bilateral allocable contributions committed to gender equality and women’s empowerment as a principal objective was 12.3% in 2023-2024, compared with the private philanthropic average of 11.9%.
The Gates Foundation includes gender equality objectives in 42.3% of contributions for humanitarian aid, above the 2023-2024 private philanthropic average of 11.5%.
The Gates Foundation screens the majority of bilateral allocable contributions activities against the DAC gender equality policy marker (99.5% in 2023-2024).
The Gates Foundation committed USD 27.8 million of contributions to end violence against women and girls and USD 82.6 million to support women’s rights organisations and movements, and government institutions on average per year in 2023-2024.
Learn more about the DAC Recommendation on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of All Women and Girls in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance and the DAC Recommendation on Ending Sexual Exploitation in Development Co-operation.
In 2023-2024, the Gates Foundation committed 8.5% of its total bilateral allocable contributions (USD 455.4 million) in support of the environment, up from 8.3% in 2021-2022. The private philanthropic average was 12.4%. In addition:
0.2% of screened bilateral allocable contributions (USD 11.9 million) focused on environmental issues as a principal objective.
8.4% of total bilateral allocable contributions (USD 450 million) focused on climate change overall (the private philanthropic average was 12.9%), up from 8.3% in 2021-2022. The Gates Foundation had a greater focus on adaptation (8.4%) than on mitigation (0.3%) in 2023-2024.
Learn more about the DAC Declaration on Aligning Development Co-operation with the Goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
In 2024, the Gates Foundation committed the largest shares of its contributions to SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals), SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and SDG 1 (no poverty) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Access the full list of providers at this link: Development Co-operation Profiles.
Official website: https://www.gatesfoundation.org.
The methodological notes provide further details on the definitions and statistical methodologies applied, including core and earmarked contributions to multilateral organisations, channels of delivery, bilateral unspecified/unallocated/allocable development finance, the gender equality policy marker, and the environment markers.
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