Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi)
Theory of Change
Description
Created in 1999 and formally launched in January 2000, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, is an independent public-private partnership and multilateral funding mechanism that aims to “save lives and protect people’s health by increasing coverage and equitable and sustainable use of vaccines.” Gavi is the legal administrator for COVAX.
Challenge and Context
COVAX—the world’s largest program for the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines—was developed to respond to the need for equitable access to safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVAX Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) mechanism provides COVID-19 vaccines free of charge for 92 of the world’s lowest-income countries. In addition, AMC countries can also use the COVAX Cost-Sharing Mechanism to order more doses using domestic resources or low-cost financing from their Multilateral Development Bank partners, enabling them to protect more people, more quickly.
Impact
COVAX aims to increase access and affordability of COVID-19 vaccines in eligible countries. To date, COVAX has helped to deliver some two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccinations to lower-income countries. COVAX was awarded the 2023 Grunin Prize by NYU Law School, which recognizes projects that demonstrate innovation, potential impact, replicability, and scalability.
Expected Outcomes
- Increased supply of vaccines to lower-middle-income countries
- Improved affordability of vaccines by providing a lower-cost procurement option for countries that are unable to secure reasonable bilateral deals
- Provided additional financing options to lower-middle-income countries by linking individual country vaccine demand to pooled procurement and Multilateral Development Bank financing
Why SEDF?
The Guarantee facility was a unique investment for SEDF. Few other impact investors have the capacity to advance a guarantee of this scale on such concessionary terms. SEDF’s investment is one part of Open Society’s response to advancing vaccine justice.