Global coalition of foundations pushes IMF, G-7 on vaccine equity

This week, leaders from a coalition of some of the world’s largest foundations, such as the Open Society Foundations and The Rockefeller Foundation, pushed the International Monetary Fund and members of the G-7 group of nations to prioritize COVID-19 vaccine equity amid the growing threat that the new omicron variant will spread quickly.

The coalition — which officially launched in October as the Global Alliance of Foundations — is also starting a unified campaign for the reallocation of IMF Special Drawing Rights that could help low- and middle-income countries recover from the pandemic faster.

Leaders from the alliance met with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Monday to discuss what she referred to in a tweet as a “collective call for equitable #COVID19 relief.”

Rosalind McKenna, acting special adviser at the Open Society Foundations, told Devex that OSF and other alliance members discussed “mutual priorities on COVID-19 response and wider economic recovery” with Georgieva.

IMF did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.

McKenna said the alliance also wants to meet with the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and UNAIDS to talk about how foundations can help “move the needle” on issues that the alliance sees as interconnected, such as vaccine equity for the global south, worldwide economic recovery from the pandemic, and efforts to mitigate climate change.

The foundations came together because they realized “we need to act in lockstep on each of those pieces if you’re to move any one of them,” she said.

In addition to OSF and The Rockefeller Foundation, alliance members include the Aliko Dangote Foundation, Archewell Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chaudhary Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Fundación Saldarriaga Concha, Kagiso Trust, the Mastercard Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the OppGen Philanthropies, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The alliance has formed working groups focused on goals that include reaching COVID-19 vaccination rates of 40% in low- and middle-income countries by the end of this year and 70% by September in alignment with WHO’s objectives and targets, said Mike Muldoon, managing director of innovative finance at The Rockefeller Foundation. Another goal is to encourage high-income countries to redirect $100 billion in IMF Special Drawing Rights reserves to less wealthy nations as part of a $650 billion issuance that went through earlier this year, he said.

“Those are just the initial objectives that we were able to coalesce around and really kind of bring our collective heft against. And when I say heft, I mean granting, funding, convening power, brand, and everything else,” Muldoon said.

The alliance also recently issued a statement urging G-7 countries and multinational pharmaceutical companies to lift restrictions on vaccine supplies as “concern escalates over the threat of the Omicron COVID-19 variant spreading.”

Specifically, the coalition called for G-7 countries to “make good on earlier commitments” to help nations in the global south with buying, administering, and producing their own vaccines. Countries with excess doses should also stop hoarding and instead donate those supplies, the alliance said.

During a briefing for the Africa-Europe Foundation on Thursday, Mo Ibrahim — the billionaire and eponymous founder of the alliance’s Mo Ibrahim Foundation — said it was a “betrayal” for wealthy countries to hoard vaccine supplies and block intellectual property waivers that would allow lower-income nations to manufacture their own COVID-19 medical products. He specifically called out the European Union for opposing a temporary waiver to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights at the World Trade Organization.

“I am very disappointed that the European Union blocked the question of removing” the IP rights, he said. “My friends in Europe, you are betraying your own values by acting like that.”

Ibrahim described rich countries and pharmaceutical companies as “misbehaving” in regard to providing equitable access to COVID-19 treatments.

The Africa-Europe Foundation — a consortium of business, civil, and policy groups — launched last year with the goal of fostering better relations between the two continents. In a new charter released this week, the consortium said the response to the pandemic and the ongoing “climate emergency” had highlighted the power imbalances between Europe and Africa and “served to undermine trust between peoples, nations, and continents.”