The World Bank and the African Union (AU) have announced a partnership to fast track vaccine acquisition on the continent and avoid a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Africa is seeing a surge in Covid-19 cases, an increase driven by new variants of the virus and slow vaccination rates.

The new partnership will support the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) initiative with resources to allow countries to purchase and deploy vaccines for up to 400-million people across Africa. 

The African Finance Ministers and the World Bank Group said this will boost the AU’s target to vaccinate 60% of the continent’s population by 2022.

The new effort will complement the COVAX initiative.

AVATT will coordinate closely with African Ministers of Finance to realise herd immunity for the full reopening of the continent’s economies.

COVID-19 VACCINE ACQUISITION

The World Bank has $12-billion in vaccine financing available to help countries purchase and distribute vaccines and address readiness issues.

It has already approved operations to support vaccine roll-out in 36 countries and by the end of June the World Bank expects to be supporting vaccination efforts in 50 countries, two-thirds of which are in Africa.

“The World Bank-financed Covid-19 vaccine operations allowing countries to purchase vaccines through COVAX, through regional initiatives, and through bilateral procurement from manufacturers. As such, the Bank has been working closely with AVATT to see that countries in Africa can use World Bank financing to purchase Covid-19 doses through the AVATT initiative as well,” said Economic Commission for Africa executive secretary Vera Songwe.