The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic shed light on the shortcomings of African health systems. But it also gave rise to an unprecedented initiative by the African Union, supported by Afreximbank, Africa CDC and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT). The fund was set up to compensate for the Covax programme’s neglect of Africa. On September 27 2024, a meeting of a panel of experts who had taken part in this massive project provided an opportunity to review the history of this response.
The Covid-19 pandemic gave western countries an opportunity to question Africa’s ability to respond effectively to the pressure associated with a global health crisis, without realising that the Ebola pandemic in West Africa in 2014 provided the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention cells with decisive lessons for the emergency response and surveillance crisis in Africa. These centres, with the support of the African Export-Import Bank, Afreximbank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, UNECA, and AU member countries, set up the African Vaccine Acquisition Fund (AVAT). The aim of this project was to fill the vaccine gap in Africa, to which the Covax initiative was intended to respond.
“It didn’t make sense that people had gone to sign the COVAX arrangement. The COVAX arrangement was a multilateral arrangement that all signatories committed to distribute vaccines whenever they arrived on a fair and equitable basis.But the ink with which they signed the COVAX did not dry. They went immediately and bought up all the vaccines from the factories expected to produce those vaccines.”
Benedict Oramah, President of Afreximbank – Nigeria
The agreement between AVAT and Johnson & Johnson for the purchase of vaccines in 2021 was made possible thanks to a $2 billion facility provided by Afreximbank, which at the time was the ECA’s instalment adviser, coordinating the alignment of AU finance ministers on the financing arrangements for 400 million doses of vaccines.
“COVAX said, Africa, they were able to supply Africa with 20% of the vaccines because they needed to vaccinate priority populations, people, health care workers, elderly people with conditions. But we did an analysis and we said we went to the head of state. We strived.”
John Nkengasong, Former director of Africa CDC – Cameroon
The meeting also provided an opportunity to present the documentary ‘Africa, Covid and Beyond’ and to announce the forthcoming release of the book ‘Riding the Storm: the Untold Story of Africa’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic’ by Toni Kan. Afreximbank has been recognised by the Global Trade Review (GTR) as the trade leader in pandemic support and ranked by Global Finance magazine in its annual list of the world’s best investment banks in 2021. This success testifies to the institution’s commitment to promoting people’s health.
