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This week, Gavi makes its case for investment, visa issues rattle Africans (again), and a SDG status update. But first, African countries aren’t producing their own vaccines, and it affects us all.

Africa's vaccine moment

Vaccines are modern day miracles. They’ve saved six lives every minute for the past 50 years. But access to them isn’t evenly distributed, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic. One year after the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in December 2020, over half the people in Europe, Latin America, and North America were fully vaccinated. In Africa, just 10% were.

African leaders got the message: if Africa’s 1.4 billion people are going to have reliable access to vaccines, African governments can’t rely on the goodwill or promises of others. So they began prioritising vaccine sovereignty, setting a target for Africa to produce 60% of its vaccine supply by 2040.

It’s a noble and necessary goal. But to achieve it, they’ll collectively need to produce 4 million vaccine doses daily. They currently produce less than 60,000 per day.

Scaling up African vaccine production is critical for the health of Africans and for everyone else. There’s about a 1 in 6 chance that a pandemic similar to COVID-19 will occur in one’s lifetime; that could increase to a 1 in 2 chance in the next couple of decades, due in part to climate change.

Achieving vaccine sovereignty in Africa will require investments at many levels. But the potential dividends are significant: improved health among the world's youngest and fastest growing population; strengthened capacity to respond to global pandemics; and new technological innovation, economic growth, and job creation.

It’s a win-win-win, and there’s no time to lose.

You can learn more about Africa’s quest for vaccine sovereignty and a 6-point plan for achieving it in our latest data dive.

- Joe Kraus, Aftershocks Editor

Top news

Double vision: Gavi – the world’s largest vaccine purchaser for lower income countries – announced plans to vaccinate 1 billion people in the next 10 years. It previously took 20 years to hit the same milestone. To stay on track for this goal, Gavi needs US$9 billion in new commitments to fund its work between 2026-2030. The United States announced it will pledge at least $1.58 billion over the next five years to Gavi. Time for other donors to follow suit.

“Visa chaos”: Dozens of delegates from Africa and Asia struggled to get visas in time to attend the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which ended last week. By contrast, delegates from Europe and most of the Americas didn’t need a visa to attend. Climate activists say that visa barriers are hindering the ability of people to participate in climate decisions that will determine their future. Some participants were unable to attend or had to scramble to rebook flights due to visa issues. This has become a pattern: visa denials have prevented African delegates from attending several international events in recent years, including in Canada, France, and the US. That’s led to a growing push for events to take place in more accessible places.

Political will hunting: Nearly two-thirds of the way to the Sustainable Development Goals’ 2030 deadline, Africa has made significant progress on just two of the 17 goals. Little progress has been made toward the goals of eradicating poverty, ending hunger, and providing good health and wellbeing. The continent needs an additional US$470 billion each year to achieve the SDGs. Failure to adequately finance the SDGs could leave 600 million people still living in poverty beyond 2030. Plenty of solutions exist, including better leveraging multilateral finance, reducing countries’ debt burdens, scaling up climate finance, and curbing tax cheats and corruption. The real challenge is finding that all-too-elusive creature: political will.

From the ONE Team

• ONE's David McNair breaks down the six steps to Africa's vaccine sovereignty.
• ONE’s David McNair on why European countries should strengthen the World Bank and IMF’s capacity to provide climate finance to developing countries, and how to tackle Africa’s 500% debt premium.

The numbers

• 99% of Africa’s vaccine supply is produced outside of Africa, despite Africa accounting for nearly one-quarter of the global disease burden.
• US$800 billion in lending has been leveraged from the US$19 billion that the World Bank has received from shareholders since 1944.
• 37% of global vaccine demand will come from Africa by the end of this decade.

Quote of the week

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”

– A senior US military officer involved in a campaign to undermine Chinese vaccines.

What you should read, watch, and listen to:

• Youth stuck in one of the world’s largest refugee camps dream of a better life.
• The US military ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic.
• Understanding the World Bank’s IDA21 replenishment.
• Financing Africa: Where is the money?

A look ahead

22-30 June: London Climate Action Week, London, UK

26-28 June: Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation (Tunis, Tunisia)

27 June: Launch of the 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report (virtual)

The ONE Campaign’s data.one.org provides cutting edge data and analysis on the economic, political, and social changes impacting Africa. Check it out HERE.

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