coronavirus vaccines. As of mid-February 2022, the continent had received nearly 669 million doses (nearly 6 percent of all COVID-19 vaccines) and administered 405 million. Nearly 10 percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa is fully vaccinated according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as opposed to 64 percent in the United States and 85 percent in Great Britain. Only eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa exceeded the World Health Organization target of 40 percent of the population with a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine by end-2021 (figure 1.10). The probability of most countries in the region reaching the 70 percent target by mid-2022 is very small. If access to COVID-19 vaccines by low-income countries (and, notably, African countries) does not improve at a faster pace, the world runs the risk of prolonging the pandemic. Low-vaccination countries/regions can potentially become the epicenter of the virus, as they might facilitate the emergence of new variants that might reduce vaccine effectiveness as well as heighten disease severity and global spread.13 Many countries in the region still have low vaccination rates.
FIGURE 1.10: Population with at Least One Dose of the COVID-19 Vaccine (%)
100 90 80
Percent
70 60 50 40 30 20
0
Seychelles Mauritius Comoros Rwanda Botswana Cabo Verde São Tomé and Príncipe Mozambique Uganda Mauritania Angola Lesotho Zimbabawe Ghana Côte d'Ivoire Guinea-Bissau Guinea Benin South Africa Liberia Sierre Leone Ethiopia Equatorial Guinea Togo Namibia Gabon Central African Republic Congo, Republic Kenya Sudan Somalia Gambia, The Burkina Faso Nigeria Niger Senegal Eswatini Cameroon Mali Zambia Tanzania Malawi Madagascar South Sudan Chad Congo, Dem. Rep. Burundi
10
Source: Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Note: Vaccination figures are as of March 17, 2022. The dotted lines represent the World Health Organization targets of full primary immunization against coronavirus of 40 percent by end-2021 and 70 percent by mid-2022.
Vaccine insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa reveals the excessive dependence on foreign supply and a wide gap in manufacturing vaccines in the region. The continent imports nearly 99 percent of the vaccines that it administers, while it demands more than 25 percent of the vaccines produced globally.14 Despite the challenges the region faces in vaccine manufacturing, capacity building is taking place at different stages through technological transfer partnerships at manufacturing facilities—as is the case with Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa. Scale-up efforts in already installed capacity by Biovac (South Africa) are being deployed, along with production
13 This is manifested by the different variants that were first detected in the countries/regions with low vaccination rates, like Beta (B.1.351) in South Africa (May 2020), Delta (B.1.617.2) in India (October 2020), and Omicron (B1.1.529) in Southern Africa (November 2021). 14 Sibidé (2022).
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