What is going on with Kenya’s COVID-19 vaccine drive?

Vaccine hoarding by the West and domestic corruption are hampering the vaccination campaign in Kenya.

As Kenya is ravaged by a third wave of infections and deaths, the government has instituted a partial lockdown to try and limit the spread of the virus. It has vowed to ramp up vaccinations, aiming to have at least 16 million people inoculated by June next year. However, the rollout of Kenya’s COVID-19 vaccination programme has been, not unexpectedly, hampered by outright cheating, confusion and profiteering. Much of the international angst about equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines has focused on “vaccine nationalism” or the hogging of vaccine supplies by Western countries at the expense of poorer populations in much of the rest of the world. This has predictably led not just to a shortage of supplies within the richer states, including members of the European Union, but crucially, it has meant that access remains a mirage for poorer countries further downstream.