The UK will give Kenya 817,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, the government has announced.

Ministers said the offer would help the nation – which has a population of around 52 million – to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, with the first 400,000 doses due to be sent this week.

It comes as Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is due to announce that a total of nine million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines will be sent through COVAX – an initiative to distribute jabs worldwide – to individual countries.

The UK has committed to share 100 million doses internationally by June 2022.