Gavi eyes blended financing in new partnership with AIIB

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are teaming up for the first time to strengthen countries’ health infrastructure and immunization programs — including in nations preparing to transition out of Gavi support. Under the partnership, which was announced this week, Gavi will blend its grant resources with AIIB loans, expanding country access to health financing. The support will cover vaccine introduction and procurement, as well as efforts to bolster immunization infrastructure. “A trailblazing partnership is the right way to describe that, because I think global health has sometimes lagged behind other areas of development in how vertical organizations like Gavi work with horizontal organizations like [multilateral development banks],” David Kinder, Gavi’s director of development finance, told Devex. “If we do that well, we really have the potential to kind of save millions more lives by doing this. And this is just one of the first of a number of partnerships we want to bring together,” he added. AIIB, which launched a new health strategy in late 2024, intends to make available up to $1 billion in financing to support health projects in its member countries as part of the agreement. There are 44 countries that receive grant support from Gavi that are also members of AIIB. Countries in transition — those in the phase of exiting from Gavi support and co-financing a bigger portion of their vaccine costs — are among those that can benefit from the partnership. For example, if one of those countries wants to introduce a human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine, Gavi could provide a catalytic grant to kick-start the program, which would then be integrated with a larger AIIB loan, such as for financing to strengthen the country’s health system. Nineteen countries have already transitioned out of Gavi's full support and more are in the pipeline. Gavi wants to have at least two joint projects with AIIB in the next five years. But “I'm hopeful that we will end up with more than that,” Kinder said. Gavi is already sharing information on its plans with AIIB, and their aim is to conduct joint missions in the future and scope out projects together, based on country demand. Such partnerships appear crucial during a period of constrained donor resources, particularly for global health. “One of the things that our donors say to us is [that] it’s really important in these challenging times that basically grant money is managed very well and has as much impact as possible. And I think one of the things that you can do with these types of partnerships is just leverage your impact a little more,” Kinder said. His team has been looking at innovative finance for years, and over the past year and a half, it’s been trying to build Gavi’s partnerships with regional and multilateral development banks. “We have a bit of a head start on this, because the World Bank [is] a sort of founding member of the Gavi Alliance, and we work with them very closely. But what we wanted to do is not just focus on that, but really kind of reach out to others, perhaps in a way that not so many of the health financing organizations have done,” he said. Gavi’s aim is to partner with different multilateral development banks, including those providing grants, to be able to offer innovative funding arrangements to both low- and middle-income countries. It hopes that through such partnerships, it would be able to encourage countries to invest more in critical health infrastructure and immunization programs that might not often be the priority. “One of the things that's sometimes an issue when you look across the MDB world is that the rates of lending for human capital can tend to be less than physical capital. And obviously, from an economic and a long-term health perspective, they're both really, really important,” Kinder said.