The World Bank celebrated the 2017 launch of its ‘pandemic bonds’ with a glitzy video. Shots of gleeful African schoolchildren were cut with a speech from Jim Yong Kim, the Bank’s president, pledging to be ‘aggressive and creative’. The initiative would channel money quickly to disease outbreaks, he explained. But it has not delivered as promised.
The scheme was, in essence, insurance. The Bank sold $320 million of bonds and $105 million of financial derivatives to investors, asset managers and pension funds, mostly in Europe. If all went well, bondholders would receive regular interest payments and get their original sum back after three years. But if a serious epidemic struck in the Global South, they would lose their investment and funds would go instead towards fighting the disease.
