Willingness to take and pay for Covid-19 vaccination in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Kenya and Ethiopia

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing vaccination campaigns call for decisive, internationally coordinated and forward-looking action. Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in African countries. We analyze the willingness to take and pay for COVID-19 vaccines based on nationally representative in-person surveys in Kenya and Ethiopia, including a total of 4,932 households.

We find a high willingness to take COVID-19 vaccines, but a low willingness to pay for it. Vaccine acceptance is significantly associated with trust in government and pro-social behavior, while willingness to pay is related to income and health insurance coverage. Evidence suggests that the key constraint is not vaccine hesitancy but ability to pay for COVID-19 vaccines. The latter is likely to impede control of the pandemic if external funding for vaccination campaigns remains insufficient. Context-specific combinations of access to free and to fairly-priced vaccines will be needed to ensure high uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in African countries.

Authors: Arjun Bedi (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Matthias Rieger (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Emmanuel Rukundo (University Bonn) Zemzem Shigute (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Christoph Strupat (DIE)

Speaker: Dr. Christoph Strupat is researcher at the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn

Please note that the seminar will take place via Microsoft Teams. If you like to participate in the seminar, please send an email beforehand to: jan.priebe@giga-hamburg.de. Upon registration you will receive an email invite including the Microsoft Teams link