By Daniel Otunge

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation celebrated remarkable leaders advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals) with solutions to keep people healthy and nourished in a rapidly warming world during the Goalkeepers 2024: Recipe for Progress event in New York.

The annual event highlighted opportunities to ensure better nutrition so everyone can reach their full potential.

Held during the United Nations General Assembly week, the event also featured special guests, including Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Muhammad Ali Pate, coordinating minister for health and social welfare of Nigeria; Saul Guerrero Oteyza, UNICEF’s senior advisor on financing for child nutrition and development; and Christy Turlington Burns, founder and president of Every Mother Counts, among others.

Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said, “Goalkeepers is about bringing together a community of global changemakers who champion Sustainable Development Goals to energize and inspire each other to continue making progress.” 

“This year, we’re focused on the more than 400 million children who aren’t getting the nutrients they need to grow and thrive. While climate change is making that challenge harder to solve, progress is possible. By scaling up existing tools, investing in promising research, and lifting champions like the ones we’re celebrating today, we can help ensure all children reach their full potential—and build global resilience as the world gets hotter,” Suzman said.

The 2024 Global Goalkeeper Award, which recognizes a leader who has driven progress on a global scale toward achieving the Global Goals, was presented to Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

During his first term, President Lula launched Bolsa Familia. This robust anti-poverty and social inclusion program helped lift millions out of poverty and reduce Brazil’s stunting rate from 37% to 7% over three decades.

President Lula is building on this domestic legacy to champion the Global Alliance on Hunger and Poverty as the signature initiative of Brazil’s G20 presidency. The initiative embraces evidence-based strategies to improve food security, enhance health, reduce poverty, and promote equity at scale.

Ten Goalkeepers Champions —experts, innovators, advocates, and leaders from around the world—who are leading the charge toward a more nourished world, were awarded. They included:

• Tahmeed Ahmed, the executive director of the icddr,b, which is working with the government of Bangladesh to implement treatments for moderate and severe childhood malnutrition and to analyze barriers to effective implementation of maternal nutrition programs. He is also chair of the drafting committee of Bangladesh’s nutrition policy.
• Ladidi Bako-Aiyegbusi, the director of nutrition for the Ministry of Health of Nigeria. She guides the federal government’s plans to train 38,180 frontline health workers to enhance maternal, infant, and childhood nutrition, communication, and services.
• Beza Beshah Haile of Ethiopia is the founder and executive director of HOPE Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus (HOPE-SBH), where she has provided more than 3,000 families with information and skills training. Haile engages with government agencies to implement and enforce the national food fortification mandate, notably the addition of folate for pregnant women.
• Zahra Hoodbhoy of Pakistan is an assistant research professor at Aga Khan University’s Department of Pediatrics and Child Health. There, she combines public health interventions with AI tools to empower community workers to support mothers before and after delivery. She is also the primary investigator for a clinical trial for next-generation multiple micronutrient supplements.
• Nancy Krebs of the United States is a professor of pediatrics and nutrition at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her extensive research has influenced global health organizations, including the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
• Jemimah Njuki of Kenya is chief of economic empowerment at UN Women and has over 20 years of experience in the agriculture sector in Africa and Asia. She champions women’s empowerment to impact food security and improve nutrition for children and families.
• Sabin Nsanzimana, Rwanda’s minister of health, is prioritizing a range of maternal and child nutrition and health interventions, including launching a multiple micronutrient supplementation pilot program for pregnant women.
• Lilian dos Santos Rahal of Brazil, the national secretary for food and nutrition security, has been a leading voice in addressing Brazilian hunger and malnutrition.
• Bhavani Shankar of the United Kingdom is a professorial research fellow at the University of Sheffield, where he researches food, health, and environmental sustainability. He is also co-lead of INFUSION, a five-year program seeking to understand better how rural food markets function nutritionally and to establish, test, and deliver evidence for market interventions that improve the availability and affordability of nutrient-dense foods in rural Indian communities.
• Ratan Tata of India is chairman of Tata Trusts, which has supported preventing and recovering malnourished children through improved feeding and health care across India. They have pioneered food and nutrition security efforts by developing sustainable, diverse food systems—including fortifying salt, milk, and edible oils with essential micronutrients.

In 2023, the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, a condition where children don’t grow to their full potential mentally or physically, and 45 million children experienced wasting, a condition where children become weak and emaciated, leaving them at much greater risk of developmental delays and death. These are the most severe and irreversible forms of chronic and acute malnutrition.

The event followed last week’s release of the foundation’s eighth annual Goalkeepers report, “A Race to Nourish a Warming World,” which warned that without immediate global action, climate change will condemn an additional 40 million children to stunting and 28 million more to wasting between 2024 and 2050.

The report highlights tools that are helping to solve malnutrition, build people’s resilience to the worst impacts of climate change, and further drive down childhood deaths. It calls for renewed commitments to global health spending, including for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund, and the Child Nutrition Fund.