ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – A cavernous new airport cargo terminal in the capital of Ethiopia is the center of a vast supply chain that China is building to speed up the delivery of its coronavirus vaccines – and deepen its influence in the developing world.
At one end is a freezer the size of a football field to store bottles of Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical companies. In the other, there is a control room with a wall of computer monitors, where Chinese and Ethiopian technicians will track the temperatures of each batch.
This week, more than a million doses of China’s new Covid-19 vaccines will pass through here, according to Ethiopian Airlines officials. Thousands of doses have passed, they and Ugandan officials said. More deliveries are expected to arrive through a partnership between Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Ethiopian Airlines, officials at the state airline said.
At stake is a potential soft power award: the goodwill of politicians and people across 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 public health global.
For months, the government of China, state-owned companies and private companies laid the groundwork for a vaccination push from Africa to the Middle East and Latin America. They set up a supply chain that would maintain temperature controls from the point of manufacture to each stage of distribution – and would promote the “Silk Road to Health,” as Beijing called it.