In August 2021, France committed to donate 10 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to African Union countries. France has now allocated all of these doses to about 30 African countries and most of them have already been delivered.
France is providing its full support to the organizations in charge of deployment, Gavi and UNICEF, to ensure that the last doses reach the field as quickly as possible.
These vaccine donations are particularly crucial as a fourth wave, which could be more violent than previous ones, is currently feared on the continent.
The vaccines are being allocated and distributed through a partnership with the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVATT) and the Gavi-led COVID-19 Vaccine Access Facility (COVAX).
Since the beginning of the pandemic, France has promoted equitable and universal access to vaccines, particularly in Africa. France is strongly committed to help accelerate vaccination worldwide and will donate 120 million doses by summer 2022. To date, 67 million doses of vaccine have already been donated by France.
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France wanted this action to benefit African countries first and foremost, and it was in a country on this continent, Mauritania, that France made its first donation via COVAX last April. France shared its vaccines simultaneously with its national campaign, as announced by the President of the Republic at the Paris Peace Forum in 2020. Since then, nearly 60% of French donations have been directed to 38 African countries.
This is a first step, decisive but still insufficient, to close the gap between Africa and developed countries in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of access to health products. Our common objective in this regard is, in addition to donations that will accelerate vaccination in the field, to contribute to strengthen Africa’s production capacity and thus enable it to respond, in a sovereign manner, to the occurrence of future pandemics.
This is why the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, was among the very first to welcome and support the efforts of African Union member states to set up initiatives like AVAT. France, along with its European Union partners, shares the desire of African states to have a pharmaceutical industry on the continent.
France is actively engaged in building vaccine production capacity in Africa and is actively contributing to projects to transfer messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to the African continent, particularly
in South Africa, Rwanda and Senegal.