ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: A new cavernous airport cargo terminal in the Ethiopian capital is the center of a vast supply network that China is gathering to accelerate the delivery of its coronavirus vaccines and deepen its influence on all over the developing world.
At one end is a football-sized freezer for storing vials of Chinese state-controlled pharmaceutical companies. On the other, there is a control room with a wall of computer monitors where Chinese and Ethiopian technicians will monitor the temperature of each batch.
This week, more than a million doses of China’s new Covid-19 inoculations will travel around here, according to Ethiopian Airlines officials. Thousands of doses have already passed, according to them and Ugandan officials. More deliveries are expected to arrive through a partnership between Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Ethiopian Airlines, said state airline officials.
At stake is a potential soft power prize: the goodwill of politicians and people in the developing world who need low-cost Covid vaccines and the prestige of being seen as a nation with the ability to act as a guardian of world public health.
For months, the Chinese government, state-owned enterprises and private companies have laid the groundwork for a vaccination from Africa to the Middle East and Latin America. They have assembled a supply chain that would maintain temperature controls from the point of manufacture to every distribution step, and beyond the “Health Silk Road,” as Beijing called it.