Doubts about the coronavirus vaccination campaign in Africa 

While the vaccination campaign in Europe with the BioNTech- Pfizer vaccine is starting, the African continent will still have to wait about six months for the first vaccines to start. Due to the cost of production and transport of these vaccines, 46 out of 54 African countries are waiting carefully for the supply of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVAX initiative. Logistically, 1.5 billion vaccines will be needed to vaccinate 60 per cent of the continent and therefore to achieve immunisation of the group. Two vaccines per person are needed for real protection. The cost of immunising 60% of the continent will be 10 billion dollars. Dr. John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) fears that there will not be enough vaccines for all Africans. Six major vaccines are currently in development and have already begun human clinical trials. In November 2020, three of these vaccines began to show very positive results in phase three clinical trials: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, known as the European, Modern and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Both the Oxford and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines have been tested in Africa with promising results. All three have recently been approved as safe and effective vaccines in the European Union.

Despite the positive results and even if there were vaccines for all Africans, one of the main problems facing vaccines is refrigeration. The Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at a temperature of -70 degrees, which is a major logistical problem in a country where electricity is not secured. Even in capital cities there are intermittent power outages, which could mean that the vaccines are spoiled. The other two vaccines require a temperature of 2-8 degrees, so they also need a logistics chain to ensure storage at that temperature. Although preparations are already underway to establish reliable refrigeration systems in many African countries, it is feared that these will not be sufficient. A third problem is the resistance of the population to be vaccinated. In the collective consciousness, some Africans fear being used as "guinea pigs" for vaccines. Therefore, awareness and advocacy campaigns will be crucial for vaccination in Africa.  

Even though only the vaccine developed by the COVAX programme is mentioned, the truth is that there are other countries producing and selling vaccines for the African continent, mainly China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. With regard to the Chinese vaccine, countries such as Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have participated in the third clinical phase of the vaccine produced by the CNBF (China National Biotec Group). When the Chinese vaccine is ready to be distributed in Africa, Egypt will be the producer, having signed an agreement between the two governments. The distribution network will be through the Jack Ma Foundation and Ethiopian Airlines. The Chinese vaccine has drawbacks: on the one hand, international experts from various research institutes (Johns Hopkins, among others) warn that the Chinese vaccine may not work in Africa as it has been developed based on the adenovirus-5 to which many Africans have already been exposed and could be immune. Secondly, according to the article published in China Africa Project, with the distribution of protective material also carried out by the Jack Ma Foundation in Africa, there have been several cases of corruption in Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania, as the Foundation has given the personal protective equipment (PPE) to governments, but these have not been distributed to their population. Therefore, similar problems are feared in the distribution of COVID vaccines. As for the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, the Russian government is also signing agreements with 20 countries to distribute its vaccine as soon as it is ready. Among these 20 countries is Algeria. The Russian vaccine has also been criticised for not having passed all the clinical trials that normally take place in other countries. For its part, the European Union has not yet designed a plan to sell vaccines in Africa, but it has decided to contribute more to the COVAX fund, with 500 million euros, which will make it possible to make, according to the European Commission's calculations, a billion doses.  

The disparity between African countries is also evident in their capacity to participate in clinical trials and to purchase the vaccines. Some countries like Morocco have already purchased the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, others like South Africa have been active in clinical trials of several Western vaccines, such as those conducted by the University of Witwatersrand in partnership with Oxford University.