A UN summit called to rev up the war on global poverty raised a total of roughly 16 billion dollars, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said here.

"We have full commitment from many countries in pledges to help the world's poor, around the 16 billion dollars mark," he told reporters Thursday at the close of the day-long summit called to review implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

He said the exact total from pledges from world leaders, the private sector and civil society still had be tallied, but noted that "that expression of global commitment would be all the more remarkable because it comes against a backdrop of financil crisis."

"This is exactly the kind of broad, global coalition we need to reach all of our Millenium Development Goals," Ban said.

The gathering was called to galvanize world support to ensure that eight poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders in 2000 are met by all countries by 2015. Africa is lagging the rest of the world in meeting the ambitious goals.

The MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.

Major commitments were announced Thursday in four key areas: malaria control, education, health and food security.

On the malaria front, participants committed around three billions dollars for a program to save more than 4.2 million lives between 2008 and 2015.

Malaria affects half of the world's population -- 3.3 billion people in 109 countries -- and causes nearly one million deaths per year, according to UN officials.

The malaria funding includes 1.1 billion dollars from the World Bank and 1.62 billion over two years from the Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- an international partnership of government, private sector and non-governmental organizations.

Billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also providing 168.7 million dollars to fund a Malaria Vaccine Initiative for research on a new generation of malaria vaccines.

On education, Ban said 4.5 billion dollars' worth of new pledges and commitments were made to get 24 million children into school by 2010, as a milestone toward universal primary education by 2015.

In the health sector, commitments totaling nearly two billion dollars next year and rising to seven billion by 2015 were made for the MDGs relating to child mortality and maternal health.

Ban said a Global Campaign for Health also aimed to mobilize an extra 30 billion dollars by 2015, including to train over one million health workers, saving 10 million lives by 2015.

The UN chief said 1.6 billion dollars was also pledged to boost food security, including a new initiative to help poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and central Ameria gain access to rich markets.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stressed the need to spark a green revolution in Africa as he outlined key goals to ensure implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

He urged world leaders and top figures of the private sector and civil society "to invest ten billions in Africa so it can help feed not just Africa, but feed beyond Africa with its exports."

"In the past, feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa," the British leader said. "In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao, for his part, urged rich countries to double donations to the UN World Food Program over the next five years and to do more to cancel or reduce debt for poor countries.

And he said that to help achieve the MDGs, particularly in Africa, China planned to cancel outstanding interest-free loans extended to least developed countries that mature before the end of 2008, and give zero-tariff treatment to 95 percent of products from the least developed countries.

The summit took place amid heightened concern about the impact of the global financial crisis, with Ban warning that the current financial crisis "threatens the well-being of billions of people, none more so than the poorest of the poor."

"This only compounds the damage being caused by much higher prices for food and fuel," the UN chief added.

But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he did not believe the financial turmoil would lead rich countries to abandon their commitments to the MDGs, as many African leaders fear.

And he said Berlin planned to boost its development aid next year by 1.2 billion dollars.