According to a report by newZWire, Zimbabwe could get as much as 3 010 283 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. This delivery would be taken under the African Vaccine Acquisition Task team (Avatt) which was established by the African Union last year in August. The team is set to acquire as much as 270 million doses of the vaccine. These will then be distributed to African countries according to their population size.

Zimbabwe’s allocation, under the plan, will be 3 010 283 doses. This will cost the country US$20.5 million, according to an Afreximbank schedule.

As part of the Avatt facility, Afreximbank will, upon receipt of firm orders from African states, provide advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to US$2 billion to the manufacturers on behalf of countries. African countries will then pay for the drugs using an Afreximbank instalment payment facility of up to five years.

The vaccines are coming through India via a company called Serum Institute which was licenced by Pfizer and AstraZeneca to mass produce their versions of the vaccine for distribution into the developed world.

The involvement of Afreximbank has Zimbabweans raising their eyebrows in curiosity however. This was the bank that was said to have provided the funds to back the RBZ’s notorious bond notes so that they could be issued on par with the US dollar. No one knows what happened to the facility that backed this pseudo currency. All we know is that eventually the RBZ just stopped talking about this link before finally admitting bond notes were not worth the same as US dollars.