Kenya and other African countries will pay between KSh330 and Ksh110 per vaccine dose according to a draft briefing by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) seen by Reuters.
African countries have managed to secure 270 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in January alone through the African Union.
Of these, Kenya has ordered 24 million doses which can only serve 20% of her population.
AU chaired by South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has since made arrangement with Afreximbank to provide funding to countries which cannot manage to pay for the vaccines. They are then required to pay back in installments over a period of five to seven years.
From the draft document, African countries are able to get the vaccine on subsidized costs compared to countries in Europe.
UK’s AstraZeneca vaccine is the cheapest and best aligned for Africa. It can be refrigerated under normal conditions unlike Pfizer and BioNTech.
It will retail at Ksh300 per dose. India’s Serum has been contracted to produce 100 million doses of AstraZeneca enough for 50 million people.
Pfizer will provide 50 million doses at Ksh700 per dose for Africa. The same does is selling at Ksh1900 for the US and Ksh3000 for Israel.
The AU is looking at population size of each country to determine the amount of vaccines each country will get.
However, as vaccine manufacturers scale up operations, Some African countries are struggling to get supplies courtesy of the second wave of coronavirus which is resistant to the vaccines.
Through COVAX, poor and middle-income African countries will get 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine beginning February.
