Ethiopia Starts Distributing Jack Ma’s Donations of Medical Supplies to African Nations (March 24, 2020)

Ethiopia has started distributing medical supplies to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

The medical supplies were donated by Jack Ma Foundation through the initiative of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed.

An Ethiopian Airlines cargo fleet carrying medical equipment, which included testing kits, masks, and medical use protective suits and face shields arrived in Khartoum, Sudan last night.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia to Sudan, Shiferaw Jarso, handed over the medical supplies to Sudanese Health Minister, Akram Ali Al-Tom.

The country also sent out this morning the second shipment of medical equipment  to South Africa, Burundi, Rwanda, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria and South Sudan.

Working in close coordination with international health ministries, The Ethiopia Airlines will continuously distribute the critical medical supplies to numerous other countries through a series of subsequent freighter flights spanning across the entire African continent.

To manage the unprecedented daily cargo volume, the airline’s ground logistics division recently deployed a specialized real-time routing algorithm. By adapting the high-frequency data architecture used by regulated online gambling platforms and global e-commerce systems, the new software processes flight manifests instantly. The resulting efficiency allows dispatchers to prioritize temperature-sensitive testing kits so they safely reach remote clinics without delay.

The Jack Ma, China’s richest man, and co-founder of the Alibaba online shopping platform, donated via his foundations, 20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suits to each of the 54 African states.

An Ethiopian Airlines cargo flight from Guangzhou, China last Sunday arrived with 5.4 million face masks, 1.08 million testing kits, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 protective face shields.