The funds announced by the Gates Foundation will complement ongoing investments in the use of artificial intelligence to develop the healthcare sector worldwide. 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledges $30 million to support the development of a new artificial intelligence platform for Africa. American billionaire Bill Gates (photo) made the announcement on Tuesday, October 10, at this year's "Grand Challenges" meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

According to the donors, the platform will provide African scientists and innovators with the technical and operational support they need to turn promising health and development ideas into real, scalable solutions.

It is a step towards ensuring that the benefits of AI are relevant, affordable, and accessible to all and that these essential tools are developed both safely, ethically, and equitably.

"The world needs to make sure that everyone—and not just people who are well-off—benefits from artificial intelligence. Governments and philanthropy will need to play a major role in ensuring that it reduces inequity and doesn’t contribute to it. This is the priority for my own work related to AI," Bill Gates said in an interview last March.

According to the Foundation, this latest investment aligns with its recent focus on funding technological innovation, particularly as it relates to AI, in the world's low- and middle-income countries. Last August, the Foundation announced that it would spend $5 million to fund nearly 50 AI projects in the said countries.

These investments aim to increase funding for healthcare R&D (research and development) worldwide to make development easier and faster and enable the next generation of scientific and technological breakthroughs that are relevant and accessible to all.

According to the Foundation, only 2% of R&D funding is devoted to diseases affecting the world's poorest populations.