The Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP) has commenced the COVID-19 vaccines pre-order program for all African Union (AU) member states. They are doing it on behalf of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
The program comes after confirmation that the African Union had secured a provisional 270 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for African countries, through its COVID-19 African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT). Afreximbank will facilitate payments by providing advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to Ksh. 200 billion (USD 2 billion) to the manufacturers on behalf of the Member States. This was announced by the AU Chairperson, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.
AVATT has also secured a provisional 270 million COVID-19 vaccines doses from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
“These are historical times. For the first time in history, Africa has secured access to millions of vaccine doses in the middle of a pandemic as most of Western countries. There is still a huge shortage of vaccine doses and that is why this continental collaboration has designed a fair allocation coupled with timely and equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines across the continent,” said African Union Special Envoy Strive Masiyiwa.
To support vaccination operations, the Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP) has also launched a new category on vaccine accessories. They will help Member States to procure products such as ultra-low temperature freezers, personal protection equipment, cotton wool rolls, syringes and needles.
“Afreximbank is proud to expand its support to African economies in their bid to contain the pandemic. Our vaccine financing facility builds on the success of our Pandemic Trade Impact Mitigation Facility (PATIMFA) to open access to COVID 19 vaccines to African states based on a whole-of-Africa approach favoured by the African Union”, said Prof. Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
AMSP, which is the single-source platform, enables faster, more transparent and cost-effective access to COVID-19 supplies, and has opened for pre-orders, offering an equitable access of COVID-19 vaccines doses for 55 African Union member states.