Rwanda, on thursday, november 25, received 151,200 Johnson and Johnson Covid-19 vaccine doses purchased under the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative. The Saving Lives Initiative is a facility under which the MasterCard Foundation is purchasing vaccines for more than 65 million people across Africa. Vaccines purchased under the initiative build on a historic agreement negotiated by the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) earlier this year for the purchase of 400 million Johnson and Johnson vaccines as well as a more recent agreement for the purchase of 50 million Moderna vaccines. Launched in June 2021, Saving Lives and Livelihoods is now a USD 1.5 billion partnership that aims to enable vaccination for millions of people, and strengthen the Africa CDC’s capacity to oversee the vaccination campaign on the continent, and effectively respond to future outbreaks. Commenting on the delivery of the vaccines, Dr. Daniel Ngamije, the Minister of Health the stressed the importance of Covid-19 vaccination campaigns ongoing across the country currently. “Our target is to vaccinate more than 70% of our population before the year 2022 ends. We are grateful for this delivery of vaccines because they will allow us to fully vaccinate more than 1.6% of our target population,” he said. Reeta Roy, the President and CEO of the Mastercard Foundation reiterated that they will be working with the Africa CDC and multiple organizations to support the roll out of vaccines to millions across the continent. “More remains to be done to urgently increase vaccination rates. We call on all actors to step forward to save lives and livelihoods in Africa,” she said. Dr. John Nkengasong, the Director of the Africa CDC said African is steadily picking up momentum in the continental vaccination effort. “In September, the first tranche of AVAT-purchased vaccines began rolling out to 39 countries. Now we are announcing the delivery of vaccines purchased through the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative. And we are working hard on the ground to get jabs-in-arms, which is the ultimate measure of success,” he said. The Mastercard Foundation will fund the purchase of 57 million Johnson and Johnson vaccines and is seeking to purchase approximately 17 million Moderna vaccines. The AVAT mechanism was created to enable African countries to pool together resources to directly purchase vaccines at discounted prices made possible by volume orders. “Through the AVAT, we have secured enough vaccines to vaccinate 450 million people by September 2022. In this regard, Africa has met its side of the bargain. So far, the Mastercard Foundation is the only foundation that has stepped up to support Africa in this work. They are covering AVAT’s entire November shipment—and we remain grateful for their support. We hope to see other foundations and corporations get behind the local and national delivery of vaccines,” said Strive Masiyiwa, African Union Special Envoy.
