PREVIEW
East African health ministers pledged solidarity at a virtual summit – but with $80m of last year's budget still unpaid, the money to counter the epidemic isn’t there yet
The East African Community is pushing a co-ordinated response to the Ebola emergency in Congo-Kinshasa's Ituri province (AC Vol 67 No 11, Jean Kaseya: Ebola crisis manager). At a virtual summit on 1-2 June, regional health ministers committed to ‘strengthening cross-border surveillance, improving rapid response mechanisms and harmonising health protocols to prevent further spread of the disease.’
The elephant in the room – Kenya's plan to allow the United States to build an Ebola quarantine facility at Laikipia Air Base – was not on the agenda. In late May, EAC ministers signed off on a budget of US$110.86 million for the 2026/27 financial year. The budget is only a million dollars up from last year’s proposal, and the extra cash is supposed to go to an EAC Pandemic Project.
The trouble is who is going to pay for it. Around $80m of the 2025/26 budget has still not been paid. The EAC hopes that Kenya will be the main contributor via a new funding formula for the regional bloc approved in March 2025. It replaces the current equal-share model – under which only Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania have been regular payers – with a hybrid system where 50% of a country’s contribution is based on its average GDP per capita over the past five years (AC Vol 67 No 5, Barren road to Arusha). The new formula increases Kenya’s contribution by 67% and is designed to encourage new members Somalia and South Sudan, who are years in arrears, to pay their smaller dues.
The EAC is expecting the European Union to also contribute to the pandemic project as part of Brussels’ pledge to bolster African health systems.
The budget is the first major test of Tanzania’s Stephen Mbundi, who was appointed as EAC Secretary General in April, abandoning the rotation principle because South Sudan had not paid their budget contribution.
Mbundi says that the pandemic project will pool together ‘laboratory diagnosis, infection prevention and control, risk communication, and rapid response capacities.’
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