France will send 10 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines against Covid-19 to Africa, via the African Union (AU), over the next three months, the Elysee announced on Monday.
This partnership between Paris and the AU provides that these doses “will be allocated and distributed within the framework of the African Fund for the acquisition of vaccines (Avat) and the mechanism for a global access to the vaccine (Covax)”, two initiatives intended to allow Africa to try to catch up in vaccination compared to developed countries.
A strong gesture of solidarity
“The (Covid-19) pandemic can only be overcome through intense cooperation between multilateral, regional and national actors,” said President Emmanuel Macron, quoted in a press release. “I want us to act together by leveraging the know-how and political legitimacy of African leaders and building on our strong partnership with the African Union,” he adds.
For his part, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described the French donation as “a strong and welcome gesture of human solidarity and political cooperation at a time when the world needs it most.”
400 million Africans vaccinated by September 2022
During a meeting devoted to this subject with Emmanuel Macron in Pretoria in May, Cyril Ramaphosa denounced “a vaccine apartheid” regretting that some countries receive an “unlimited” number of vaccines while a very small number of Africans are protected.
Avat is a pooled procurement mechanism to enable AU Member States to procure enough vaccines to meet at least 50% of their needs. It is complementary to Covax, whose objective is to provide the remaining 50% through donations.
According to the Elysee, “enough vaccines have already been purchased under the Avat initiative to allow, by September 2022, the vaccination by African countries of 400 million people, or a third of the African population , at a cost of three billion dollars ”.