On Wednesday, a Saudi Arabian billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, announced he would donate his $32bn (£20bn) fortune to charity over the coming years. The decision, he said, had been motivated by his life-long commitment to helping to build a “more peaceful, equitable and sustainable world for generations to come”.

If the money were split equally among the eight programmes the prince suggested – with $4bn going to each – what might it achieve? Here are some of the options.

Modernisation and infrastructure

A $4bn investment would buy 600km of standard gauge railway between Nairobi and Mombasa. Alternatively, it would cover two 600 megawatt hydropower stations on the Nile in Uganda.

The full $32bn, meanwhile, could take energy supplies to more than half the places off the grid in Africa (source: Overseas Development Institute).

Poverty alleviation

A $4bn windfall would go about 80% of the way to ensuring every person in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – one of the poorest countries on the planet – has access to basic services such as health and education (source: ONE campaign).



The same sum would cover the funding gap for essential health and education services for everyone in Tanzania, Zambia and Liberia (source: ONE campaign).

Disaster relief



$4bn would cover the total bill to help the Syrian refugees who have fled to nearby countries, providing essentials like clean water, adequate shelter and food assistance (source: Oxfam).



A $4bn injection would fully fund roughly 20% of the current worldwide humanitarian needs. Or, more specifically, it would just about cover the gap in funding for the entire Syrian regional refugee response and the funding gap on South Sudan combined (source: Care International).

The same sum would almost cover the funding gap for 12 other ongoing humanitarian crises around the world (source: Care International).



Education and empowering children

With support worth $4bn, the 58 million children left behind by the millennium development goal on education would be able to go to primary school (source: Care International).

Just $500,000 could enable 1,000 schools in Pakistan to use the latest technology to plan, prepare and manage against the risk of attacks, enabling children to attend school more safely. The sum would cover the creation of school safety strategies using analytical software, and working with communities to implement them (source: Unicef).



A $1,000,000 investment would enable 10,000 nomadic children in Eritrea to go to school. This could include establishing new nomadic learning centres, expanding existing ones, and training teachers to enable the most marginalised children to access their right to a quality education for the long term (source: Unicef).

$3.2bn would feed the 66 million school-aged children who go hungry. Being well-nourished would give poorer children a far greater chance of getting an education and bringing themselves out of poverty through better paid work (source: Oxfam).

Promotion of health

For $4bn, more than 12 million people could be provided with antiretroviral drugs – more than the total number of people living with HIV/Aids across the least developed countries. Alternatively, the money would pay for 190 million children to be fully vaccinated, saving more than 6 million lives (source: One campaign).

Spending $4bn on water and sanitation services would also go a long way to relieving a health crisis that kills 1,400 children every day (source: WaterAid).



A $4bn investment would also build 666m basic pit latrines, or 111m improved latrines – which include a ventilation pipe and mesh to reduce odours – to serve 555 million people (source: WaterAid).

With $4bn, it would also be possible to reach as many as 167 million of the 179 million people living in the 17 countries worst off for access to clean water. Assuming there were no other obstacles, that means every person who right now lives without water in Angola, Chad, DRC, Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Tanzania and Papua New Guinea (source: WaterAid).

Empowering women

Given that the median income of women’s rights organisations worldwide is $20,000 a year, $4bn would fund 10,000 women’s rights organisations for 20 years (source: Mama Cash).

Eradicating disease

A $4bn injection would buy a four-year supply of the 11 World Health Organisation recommended-vaccines for use in 73 countries (source: Gavi, the vaccine alliance).