The Serum Institute of India CEO blamed African leaders for not ordering enough COVID-19 vaccines. The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention fired back at the “condescending” comments and described a rocky relationship with the vaccine manufacturer.
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This week SII announced that it is reducing its output of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines because supply has outstripped demand. CEO Adar Poonawalla said the reduction is due to “a combination of vaccine hesitancy and nations not coming forward and placing orders in the way in which they claim they would, particularly the African nations.”
“I’m happy to say that on record and I hope they read it because maybe they’ll get activated and do something about it,” he told The Times.
Sara Jerving reports that African health leaders did read it, and they got activated — though perhaps not in the way Poonawalla hoped.
“It was so condescending that I can’t believe that the CEO of such an organization stated that these African countries are not coming to pick their vaccines and blaming, literally, African countries,” Dr. John Nkengasong, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters Thursday.
Dr. Richard Mihigo of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa says the statements from Poonawalla are not accurate, and pointed out that African countries are not even placing individual orders with SII, because that’s what COVAX, the vaccine sharing initiative, is supposed to do.
Nkengasong also blamed SII for acting in “a very unprofessional manner” last year, when it came close to signing an agreement with the African Union but then stopped communicating.
Read: Africa CDC director calls Serum Institute of India head ‘condescending’
ICYMI: Sara also reported on what Pfizer outlines as the challenges to localizing vaccine manufacturing. For more content like this, sign up for Devex CheckUp, the must-read weekly newsletter for exclusive global health news and insider insights.
Follow the money
What does the largest contractor working with the U.S. Agency for International Development think of Administrator Samantha Power’s plan to direct 25% of the agency’s funding to local partners?
Jamey Butcher, CEO of Chemonics, says the company is on board with localization, David Ainsworth reports.
“Administrator Power set some rightly ambitious targets. It’s the right trajectory, and we’ve been pushing down that path as a business ever since I joined,” Butcher says.
Since it took over USAID’s $9.5 billion global health supply chain contract in 2015, Chemonics has increasingly focused on that area of expertise. So much so that it has now launched a new subsidiary to provide supply chain services in the development sector.
Chemonics CEO: Supply chain unit is sign of shifting business model
USAID is currently preparing to award the next version of its global health supply chain project — likely to be the agency’s most closely-watched contracting decision in the year ahead.
A coalition of experts who advocate for changing the U.S. foreign aid business model — called Unlock Aid — are warning that the agency’s guidance for potential bidders on the mega-project could already contain requirements that bar all but the usual suspects from competing.
+ Devex Pro subscribers can catch up on our event exploring USAID’s new local funding plan, and learn about what precisely needs to change for the agency to hit its localization target. Not a Pro subscriber yet? Sign up now to start your 15-day free trial and get access to deeper analysis of the development sector, exclusive digital events, and the world’s largest global development job board.
Losing ground
“The [COVID-19] pandemic could wipe out the development gains made over the past decade.”
— James Zhan, senior director of investment, U.N. Conference on Trade and DevelopmentThe Sustainable Development Goals related to water, health, and education are under particular strain due to a major decrease in foreign direct investment in the African continent.
Read: SDGs at risk in Africa as foreign direct investment declined, UN says
Gimme shelter
8.9 million Venezuelans are projected to be displaced outside their country by the end of 2022. The UN Refugee Agency and International Organization for Migration launched a $1.79 billion plan Thursday to help host communities meet their needs, Teresa Welsh reports.
Read: $1.79B needed for Venezuelan refugees and migrants in 2022
Follow through
At his Summit for Democracy, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a $424 million Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal.
The new initiative has five focus areas — supporting free and independent media, fighting corruption, bolstering democratic reformers, advancing technology for democracy, and defending free and fair elections and political processes — and USAID is launching new programs in almost every one of them. Adva Saldinger rounds up the headline announcements:
• $2.5 million for a Coalition for Securing Electoral Integrity to develop norms, guiding principles, and codes of conduct on electoral integrity issues, and up to $17.5 million to establish a Defending Democratic Elections Fund.
• $55 million to launch Partnerships for Democracy — a flexible funding plan to “surge cross-sectoral assistance to reform-minded partner governments.”
• $17.6 million for an anti-corruption response fund.
• $33.5 million to launch an Advancing Women’s and Girls’ Civic and Political Leadership Initiative, and $15 million to launch the Powered by the People initiative to assist nonviolent social movements.
• $30 million for a multidonor fund to support independent media; $5 million for an accelerator for the financial viability of independent media; and $9 million for a Global Defamation Defense Fund for Journalists.
In other news
More than 50 asylum-seekers and migrants died, and dozens more were injured yesterday after a truck carrying them crashed and overturned in Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico that has become a major transit point for those trying to reach the U.S. [BBC]
U.N. chief António Guterres has accepted the invitation to attend the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, despite diplomatic boycotts by the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia over China’s human rights abuses. [VOA]
The emergence of the omicron variant could further delay the finalization of the post-2020 global framework on the protection of biodiversity, which was set to take place during COP 15 in Kunming, China next year. [Reuters]
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
