The stories I've seen claim to be quoting der spiegel but I don't see the story on der speigel itself. For example, nothing is showing up on https://www.spiegel.de/suche/?suchbegriff=mask+kenya&seite=1
But I agree, it is highly dubious. Not having been involved, my only theory right now is that the supplier sold them to someone els. if he ran delivery himself, it is easy to route it through Kenia. Then the shipment get's lost. If he was smart, he has proper insurance for it.
"The authorities are trying to find out what happened,” a German defence ministry spokeswoman said, confirming a report first published by Spiegel Online."
Surce: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-german...
Basically the only reason we trust the Germans over the Kenyans is because of reputation, keep in mind that there is no proof for that statement, we basically take their word for it. But in Germany even recently a stash of 100000 masks was stolen from a local hospital and everyone pretends there is no supply shortage.
So I don't know whether the Kenyans are lying, but I do know that the Germans are, because of information updates I get from local health department connections. Might just be the German government trying to talk themselves out of a bad situation. But right now, we don't know either way.
"We, therefore, wish to inform the public that we are treating this report of alleged disappearance of six million type FFP2 protective masks as fake news & that our cargo section continues with normal operations."
[1] https://twitter.com/KenyaAirports/status/1242455090952384512
Luckily, I found a doctor who's heading a regional association today. and at least he was very happy to hear that someone was willing, and able, to help. I almost gave up today, would have been a quite a waste of available air freight and distribution capacities to get these thing from China.
As a side note, based on my experience with the german government in term of procurement and such things, this whole Kenia story is at least in realm of being possibly true. Still, a very strange story... I'm curious to see how it ends.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/coronavirus-in-de...