Bridgewater Associates has partnered with advocacy group Global Citizen to provide macroeconomic research in a bid to help the World Bank raise roughly $5 billion to extend loans to developing countries, the two partners announced on Monday.
The $112.5 billion hedge fund said the research will help governments across the globe make informed decisions about potential donations to the World Bank's International Development Agency (IDA) fund.
Nir Bar Dea, Bridgewater's chief executive officer, said the research will focus on Africa, where many countries have received proceeds from the IDA fund in recent years.
Bar Dea said Bridgewater is focusing on the continent because of its shifting demographic profile. The hedge fund estimates that the sub-Saharan African population is projected to account for a quarter of the world's working-age population within a few decades, and will have more people of working age than China in about ten years.
He added it was necessary "to massively accelerate strategic investments from the public sector in things like access to electricity and health care," he said in an interview.
As a macro hedge fund, which trades different types of assets from many countries, Bridgewater has used economic research to place bets for almost 50 years. Its returns since it was founded by investor Ray Dalio placed it as the fourth most profitable fund according to LCH Investments, a fund-of-funds firm that is part of the Edmond de Rothschild Group and tracks hedge funds' annual returns to calculate their cumulative lifetime gains.
Bar Dea declined to say the percentage of Bridgewater's money that is currently invested in African assets.
Global Citizen will use Bridgewater's research to raise awareness of the continent's needs. This, in turn, should help the World Bank's fundraising, said Hugh Evans, Global Citizen's co-founder and CEO.
Evans said the research will be available for Global Citizen's 12 million members and G20 countries, which are donor nations of the IDA fund.
