By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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In the last few weeks, we’ve read and seen many stories about Covid-19 “vaccine diplomacy”. On Tuesday, CNN had a report showing quite impressive preparations by China to distribute millions of vaccines all over the world as soon they are approved.

The report noted that the aggressive plan is part of China’s diplomatic push to clean its image, especially in parts of the world where it is blamed for first hiding, then not doing enough, to control the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan at the end of 2019.

China won’t be alone. In the second half of next year, there will be more Covid-19 diplomatic initiatives than you can throw a hat at.

But the more interesting bit will definitely be the domestic Covid-19 politics. And, sure as hell, it will be big, exciting, and even turbulent.

First, in most of East Africa, and indeed Africa, the issue of who gets the vaccine first, or at all, will get very political. The institutions best prepared to provide and store it are not, in most countries, the government, but the pricey private hospitals.

They will secure vaccines commercially fairly early, or some of the free ones from China, the World Health Organisation, the European Union, and other do-gooders, will leak to them.

In the first few weeks, they will put anything from a 150 percent to 200 percent mark-up on them, so those who can fork out $75 to $100 for a shot will get their thing quickly.

Very quickly, there will commentaries in the media about a “vaccine elite” or “vaccine privilegentsia”, and the “vaccine poor/have-nots”. Expect a lot of scorn to go around. A Covid vaccine certificate will become the equivalent of a golden iPhone 11 Pro Max.

Within months, if not weeks, the political class will get into it, using the Covid vaccine as social bribes for electoral support. Just as they do with emergency food relief for people who are dying in famine, we will have consignments of vaccines being flagged off. A president will flag off three medium size lorries taking vaccines up-country.

Ministers will flag off three pick-ups. A county governor in Kenya will flag two pick-ups, and in other parts of East Africa the district commissioner will flag off one pick-up of vaccines.

By the time it gets to a low-level official in the district or sub-county, they will be flagging off a motorcycle or bicycles of vaccines.

But there will be many who won’t get. Then we will have new NGOs being created, or old ones diversifying, to close that gap. Expect slogans like “no one should be left behind”, and commitments to deliver Covid-19 “vaccines to the forgotten”.

We will have a new cast of star presidents and prime ministers who nailed the vaccines, and the miscreants who let their people suffer as the vaccine funds were misappropriated.

And, sure as night follows day, there will be a donor country suspending aid to a rogue nation’s health sector, because Covid-19 “vaccines were eaten”.

Also, stay tuned to stories of vaccines that were left to go bad in the sun, and fake ones given to unsuspecting people for a small fee by conmen. Those are the ways of these lands.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3