The United States’ Gates Foundation – one of the world’s largest private philanthropic organisations – will be establishing a physical presence in Singapore, as it opens a new office to deepen partnerships in global health and development in Southeast Asia.
Alongside other private foundations and non-profits such as the Hong Kong-based Institute of Philanthropy, Indonesian family-owned Tanoto Foundation, as well as Singapore’s Philanthropy Asia Alliance (PAA), the Gates Foundation will also lead an effort to crowd in over US$100 million in catalytic funding for projects that will improve health outcomes for people in the region by 2030.
The initiative will first focus on Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam – Southeast Asia’s most populous countries – where “important gains (in healthcare) have been made but further progress is needed”, said PAA in a media statement on Monday.
The philanthropic group was launched with the backing of Singapore’s Temasek Trust in 2023 and counts the Gates Foundation, co-founded by businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates, as one of its early core members.
The new initiative, known as the Health for Human Potential Community, aims to reduce preventable deaths and disease burdens across the region, focusing on maternal and child health. Its other objective is to tackle infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and malaria.
PAA’s latest “Communities” initiative will help match funders and philanthropists to high-impact projects that it has evaluated and approved. The first three Communities launched last year were focused on blue oceans, sustainable land use, as well as inclusive education; this year, PAA also introduced the Just Energy Transition Community with support from its other members such as Tara Climate Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Gates, who is in Singapore this week, spoke about plans for the foundation’s 12th office at the Philanthropy Asia Summit, on a fireside chat with the republic’s president Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He said he was often on the lookout for impactful research and initiatives when visiting the city-state.
“Asian innovation is part of the reason why I am so excited about the progress we can make in health. Some of the lower-cost vaccines are produced in India and Indonesia, but beyond cost, it is more about the cutting-edge work that can be found in the region,” said the co-founder of software giant Microsoft, citing the application of genomics and artificial intelligence (AI) in Singapore and beyond that can improve the world’s understanding of trends such as disease burden.
Since its establishment in 2000 by Gates and his former wife Melinda French Gates, the Gates Foundation has deployed more than US$77.6 billion in grants until end-2023 to support initiatives in global health, education, gender equality and poverty alleviation.
According to the World Health Organisation, around 52 per cent of under-five mortality in Southeast Asia is contributed by deaths during the neonatal period. The most common causes are complications brought on by premature births, followed by pneumonia and diarrhoea.
Gates spoke about how at the turn of the 21st century, over 10 million children under the age of five were dying every year, mostly from preventable causes and almost all in poor countries. He said investments in healthcare and nutrition from both the public and private sector have been key in reducing under-five mortality to less than 5 million children a year now.
Businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates (left) and Singapore president Tharman Shanmugaratnam (centre) spoke at a fireside chat moderated by Jennifer Lewis, lead, strategic partnerships, and co-head of collaboration & partnership at Temasek Trust (right), at the Philanthropy Asia Summit 2025. Image: Philanthropy Asia Alliance
In recent years, Gates has been vocal about how health spending needs to go up to address climate-related health impacts. Last year, the Gates Foundation had announced its largest-ever budget of US$8.6 billion to be spent on health-related technologies and programmes.
“Seventy per cent of Gates Foundation’s monies is in the research and delivery of global health because we see such tragedy and market failure in this sector.”
On his two-day visit to Singapore, Gates met with some of the city-state’s leaders, including Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Singapore’s Economic Development Board will support the set-up of the Gates Foundation’s office. In a statement, Jermaine Loy, managing director of the government agency, said Singapore is a hub for innovation and that the country’s strategic location and research ecosystem “makes it a strong platform” for the foundation to advance healthcare and AI innovations.
Across Asia, Gates Foundation also has offices in India and China.
Gates: US companies are restating their commitment to climate
This week, Temasek is convening its annual sustainability summit, Ecosperity, where representatives from governments in the region, financial institutions as well as carbon market players will meet to discuss key challenges the region faces, including how to make the business case for climate in a difficult global environment.
At the forum’s opening dinner on Monday, Gates stressed the importance of “staying the course”, despite US president Donald Trump’s campaign to wind back the climate agenda.
He said: “I do think we are seeing a trend where there is less cooperation going on now…but I don’t think that is a permanent thing. On what is happening in the US, we are seeing how that would work against (our climate efforts) but we will get around that. Maybe not overnight, but I think there is still a lot of commitment to the cause, even in the US.”
The Trump administration has made the decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement again, and has taken a wrecking ball to green policies, pledging to slash international spending on global climate initiatives.
But Gates believe the retreat is unlikely to last. He shared that in the US, some companies are already restating their commitment to the climate cause. Corporates must continue doing what is right and “get some of the resources to come back” to the climate movement, he said.
Gates will travel to Indonesia tomorrow and will meet the republic’s president Prabowo Subianto. Earlier in the week, the president shared that Gates wants to provide support for the country’s universal free school lunch programme. The initiative, launched in January with a budget of US$4.2 billion, targets at least 80 million children in the country to meet their nutritional needs.
