Chinese Government donates 200,000 Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine doses worth $3.6 million in August 2021

On August 19, 2021, Chinese Government delivered 200,000 donated doses of Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines to the Government of Rwanda. A donation ceremony was held at Kigali International Airport. Rao Hongwei, the Chinese Ambassador to Rwanda, and Daniel Ngamije, Rwanda's Minister of Health signed the handover certificate. According to the Chinese ambassador, the commitment to donate the vaccines had been made about a month prior. This donation is one in a series of vaccine donations. On November 7, 2021, the Chinese Government delivered another 300,000 donated doses of Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccines to the Government of Rwanda (see project ID#95959). On January 11, 2022, Rao Hongwei, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Rwanda, had a phone call with Hon. Vincent Biruta, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Rwanda, and officially notified him that the Chinese Government would donate a total of 4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Rwanda in 2022. However, as of December 2022, there was no evidence of this pledge being fulfilled.

Additional details

1. According to the UNICEF COVID-19 Vaccine Market Dashboard, the price of a single Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine dose is $18 (https://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=DCD/DAC/STAT(2022)33&docLanguage=En). As such, AidData has estimated the monetary value of the August 2021 donation as $3.6 million.

Number of official sources

7

Number of total sources

8