Strategic Partnership Between AP, Gates Foundation

Vijayawada:Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has said the strategic partnership between Andhra Pradesh and the Gates Foundation would help the state develop rapidly in several areas.

“This would also help in empowerment of the people and creation of wealth,” Naidu said while welcoming the Microsoft co-founder and Gates Foundation chairman Bill Gates and his team during their visit to the state Secretariat in Amaravati on Monday.

Naidu described Bill Gates’ visit to Amaravati as historic.

The Chief Minister reminisced about his first meeting with Bill Gates in 1997, when he explained to the IT wizard about the need for setting up a Microsoft unit in Hyderabad. “Eventually, with the setting up of the tech major there, Hyderabad excelled in the IT sector,” he noted.

Naidu explained that following the bifurcation of unified AP, he worked hard to develop the residuary AP. “With no shortage of resources, we would create wealth,” he said and sounded confident of making AP the number one state by 2047 with support from the Gates Foundation.

In response to Naidu’s remarks, Bill Gates referenced his first meeting with the Chief Minister, and said, he realised then itself that Naidu was a visionary. The then Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was also having a similar vision for the future, he noted.

Naidu gave a presentation to Bill Gates on Swarnandhra Vision-2047, the several initiatives of the state government, and their targets. He explained about the government’s 10 cardinal principles like zero poverty, employment for all, skill development, water security, farmer-agri tech, world class logistics, energy-fuel, product perfection, Swach Andhra and Deep Tech, aimed to realise the vision.

Naidu said the state government was adhering to ‘Speed of Delivering Governance’ and explained that it was providing a series of services like Aadhaar verification, personal/family data lake, family information, comprehensive data on both state-central government, collection of real time data through AWARE (AP Wide Area Real-time Execution), WhatsApp governance and DG Verify through apps, in order to prepare the state to meet its future needs.

“We are setting up technology based thematic clusters in addition to developing Quantum Valley Design/Foundry in Amaravati, Data-AI City as Visakhapatnam, green hydrogen valley in Kakinada, drone city in Orvakal, electronics-aero city in Lepakshi and an electronics-space city in Tirupati,” he said.

Naidu explained that AI was being used in 10 sectors and in 30 government departments. AP was having 98 AI use cases and 43 hackathons, he said, adding that they had started seven data lake projects.

Referring to Swarnandhra-2047, Naidu said, “We have plans to increase the size of AP’s economy to 2.4 trillion dollars from the present 180 billion dollars. We aim to enhance the per capita income from the present 3,400 dollars to 42,000 dollars by 2047.”

He cited the other goals like bringing unemployment to two per cent from 4.1 per cent, increase the women workforce to 80 per cent from the present 45.8 per cent, raise literacy to 100 per cent from 72 per cent, skilling of 95 per cent of the working population, and increasing the average lifespan to 85 years.

“We aim to reduce the maternal mortality rate for every lakh population to five and the infant mortality for 1,000 births to two, and also reduce anemia among pregnant women and bring down the individual expense for medical treatment to five per cent,” he said.

The Chief Minister explained about modern methods being followed in the education sector and expressed delight at the kind of support being extended to AP by the Gates Foundation. The state government, he said, is focussing on literacy-numeracy wherein they are using ORF tool (oral reading fluency) for the benefit of 13.4 lakh students from 35,000 schools.

On agriculture and allied sectors, Naidu said, “We are using AI and drones to help the farmers improve their cultivation practices to help them save the crops from pests and diseases.”

He also explained about a series of changes brought in the state’s health sector by implementing Universal Health Screening and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission to conduct health tests at low cost. “So far, we have held screening to 71 lakh persons, through 41 types of tests.”

He said, “We are taking up a programme called ‘Sanjeevini’ as a pilot project in Kadapa where we are providing healthcare to the needy through 109 health centres. We would implement Sanjeevini from July, 2026, state-wide to benefit 5.2 crore people. We are also committed to provide an AI doctor for each person.”

When health minister Satya Kumar asked how AI could be used for providing better healthcare, Bill Gates replied that it would help to provide quality healthcare and services of expert doctors even in remote areas.