Background
No continent is experiencing as much difficulty with COVID-19 vaccination roll-out as Africa. As of September 14, 2021, there were 8.06 million COVID-19 cases recorded in Africa. In the week of September 12, there were 125,000 new cases. Though this was a 27% drop from previous weeks, weekly new cases are still as high as they were during the peak of the first wave. Currently, 19 African countries continue to report high or fast-rising numbers while the highly transmissible Delta variant has been found in 31 countries.
The continent as a whole is currently standing at a low COVID-19 vaccination rate, with only 3.6% of its population fully vaccinated. COVID-19 vaccines are provided to Africa via the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) scheme. This scheme is a joint venture between the World Health Organization (WHO); Center for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI); Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and UNICEF. COVAX has a bulk purchasing program that is meant to allow smaller nations to get vaccines at the same price as larger countries. 92 of the world’s poorest nations depend on COVAX to secure vaccines.
Worldwide Vaccine Shortage
COVAX’s main promise was that by the end of 2021, 20 percent of the world’s population would be vaccinated—620 million doses. Wealthy nations fund COVAX in return for secured vaccine shipments in the future. Many had signed deals with manufacturers as early as July 2020, while COVID-19 vaccines were still in development and undergoing trials. Buying up large quantities of the vaccine far in advance has dried up the supply, leaving nothing for poorer nations. Due to this lack of supply, COVAX has only been able to distribute 65 million vaccines to over 100 countries. The primary supplier of vaccines to COVAX, the Serum Institute of India, has exported more vaccines than it has given to the entire Indian population, and due to this discrepancy, they have halted delivering vaccine shipments to other countries.
Larger countries with poorer populations are falling behind in vaccine distribution compared to more wealthy nations with smaller populations. It’s estimated that poorer countries will not get broad access to vaccines until 2023 or 2024.
Africa has received just 276 million doses and administered 198 million. Currently, less than 10 percent of African nations are expected to meet the end-year goal of fully vaccinating 40 percent of their population.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, warned about the consequences of not getting vaccines to places like Africa, saying “the staggering inequity and severe lag in shipments of vaccines threatens to turn areas in Africa with low vaccination rates into breeding grounds for vaccine-resistant variants. This could end up sending the whole world back to square one.” However, world leaders at the Global COVID-19 Summit in September announced that they would pledge hundreds of millions of doses to low- and lower-middle-income countries through COVAX in the next year.
Unusable Vaccines in Africa
Even when some vaccines are able to make their way to Africa, problems arise. Many African countries have had to either destroy or return thousands of vaccine doses because they had exceeded the expiration date. For example, Malawi destroyed 20,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and South Sudan announced that it would destroy 59,000 doses. These countries had both received vaccines from the African Union, which receives vaccines from other nations as well as manufacturers. Many of the vaccines donated through COVAX had already gone bad. The Democratic Republic of Congo said that it could not use most of the 1.7 million vaccines it received under the COVAX scheme for poorer countries. Also through COVAX, South Sudan received 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March with an expiration date at the end of June. South Sudan did not have the ability to undergo a mass vaccination rollout in such a short period of time, so it handed back 72,000 of those doses.
In South Africa, one million doses were received from India in February, with an expiration date of April. The government, however, was concerned that those vaccines would not protect against the South African COVID variant, and so, in late March, the doses were passed on to other African countries such as South Sudan, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, and The Gambia. Although Togo and The Gambia were able to use all of their vaccines prior to the expiration date, larger nations were unable to use all theirs.
Vaccine Mobilization and Skepticism
Other than receiving almost-expired vaccines, many African countries were unprepared to undergo such a vast vaccine mobilization program. These nations know how to vaccinate, but many do not have sufficient financial resources and are plagued by an ineffective government, poor transportation networks, and poor health services. There has been trouble with training health care workers and convincing them to take the vaccine. Concerns over the safety and efficacy of vaccines, fueled by myths and false information, have long plagued many nations in Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan ones. These myths have created distrust among communities and generated a dangerous environment for increased COVID transmission rates.
The Africa CDC conducted a study on COVID-19 vaccine perceptions in 15 countries that indicated a significant proportion of those living on the African continent express concerns over vaccine safety. Respondents tended to view new COVID-19 vaccines as less safe than vaccinations in general. For example, while 94 percent of Ethiopian respondents said they would be willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, other nations rated lower. The Democratic Republic of the Congo had only a 59 percent willingness to get vaccinated. More than half of respondents surveyed felt that the threat from coronavirus is exaggerated and that it does not pose the risk that others claim. Moreover, 41 percent of respondents mentioned online sources as their most trusted source for information about COVID-19, and respondents who demonstrated vaccine hesitancy were more inclined to consult online sources than those who were willing to take the vaccine. The problem seems to be a lack of education about the effects and transmissibility of the virus.
Impacts on International Development
There could be a greater force affecting people’s perceptions about the virus. In the same study by the Africa CDC, a survey was conducted to find out the exposure to general misinformation regarding COVID in Africa. Unsurprisingly, the most popular story heard on this continent, and other continents too, was that COVID-19 was created by China. The second most popular was that the virus was created by the United States, and the third was that people in Africa are being used as lab rats in vaccine trials.
These rumors reveal something deeper about how people in Africa perceive the West. Throughout history, Africa has been exploited by Western nations through the global slave trade and the Scramble for Africa, which saw European powers divide the continent for their own commercial and political interests. These two major historical events had direct consequences on the development of Africa, and the continent has not forgotten the injustices it had to endure. Anti-Western sentiment stems from centuries of colonization, occupation, and intervention. The reluctance to trust Western countries in providing vaccines for a novel virus is unsurprising given these facts.
