Australia’s contributions to Gavi
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is an international organisation that works to reduce childhood deaths through helping low-income countries procure new and underused vaccines at low prices. Gavi works with government donors, not-for-profits and private companies. Between 2000 and 2020, Gavi helped vaccinate more than 888 million children through routine programs, supported campaigns which delivered more than 1.19 billion vaccinations, and prevented over 15 million future deaths.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gavi co-led the COVAX facility to ensure equitable access to COVID vaccines together with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization (WHO). In June 2020, Gavi launched the COVID-19 Vaccines Advance Market Commitment (COVAX AMC), which was an important channel by which Australia committed to the COVAX Facility. See more details about the COVAX and COVID-19 funding in this page.
The other funding mechanisms used by Australia have been direct contributions to Gavi, and commitments to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation mechanism (IFFIm). IFFIm commitments are amounts of money donors promise to give at a future point in time. These commitments enable Gavi to issue bonds based on the promised money. It then uses money from the sale of the bonds to fund vaccine purchases.
According to Gavi, Australia provided AU$213 million in direct contributions and AU$108 in IFFIm contributions between 2016 and 2020. In its most recent commitment (2021-25), Australia increased its total pledges to Gavi to AU$458 million, including AU$300 million in direct contributions, AU$72 million to IFFIm, AU$52 million to COVAX AMC, and AU$34 million to COVAX AMC (IFFIM). Australia has also pledged to contribute AU$73 million to IFFIm and AU$52 million to COVAX AMC (IFFIm) between 2026 and 2037 (this funding may also be augmented by additional direct contributions closer to the time).
Out of the 57 governments (not including EU) that give to Gavi, Australia was the 12th largest donor between 2000 and 2010. Between 2011 and 2015 it was the 6th largest government donor and between 2016-2020 it was the 9th. On the basis of its pledges, it will be the 9th largest donor from 2021-2025 and, based on its forward commitments to date, 7th from 2026 to 2037.
The chart below shows Australia’s commitments, using data from Gavi.
For more details, view Australia’s donor profile on the Gavi website, or read these posts (here, here and here) on the Devpolicy Blog.