Vaccine Diplomacy: Politics of COVID-19 Vaccines & Public Opinion in Zimbabwe

• In Event: Global Health Politics in the Global South

Abstract

Along with the invention of COVID-19 vaccines, the issue of vaccine diplomacy emerged. The COVID-19 vaccines were unevenly distributed across the world, with less supplies in the Global South. The major geopolitical powers who developed the COVID-19 vaccines started engaging in vaccine diplomacy, competing to donate or export their vaccines to other countries. A perspective neglected in this landscape is citizens’ views of vaccines from different country origins within the target countries of vaccine diplomacy. This study conducts an original survey experiment in Zimbabwe to examine the influence of COVID-19 vaccine origins on Zimbabwean citizens’ vaccination intention. The results suggest that Zimbabwean citizens prefer a vaccine developed in South Africa the most over vaccines developed in the U.S. or China. Despite that the largest number of COVID-19 vaccines circulated in Zimbabwe come from China, and the Chinese vaccines were the least preferred. We argue that Zimbabwean citizens prefer vaccines that originate from the African region due to a series of unethical medical experiments conducted on African people by foreign powers during the colonial and post-colonial era. The finding sheds light on an irony of vaccine diplomacy, and points to an importance of building research and pharmaceutical infrastructure within African countries.

Authors

• Haruka Nagao, University of Oregon

• Rigao Liu, University of Kansas

• William Hatungimana, University of Oregon

• Leeann H Youn, Michigan Technological University

• John James Kennedy, University of Kansas