The Africa Union (AU) says it has secured a provisional 270 million doses of coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines for distribution across the continent.
African Union chairman, the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, said all the doses – which is in addition to some 600 million doses already promised – will be used in 2020.
The 600 million doses are expected from the global Covax effort which aims to provide vaccines to lower-income countries.
There are fears that poorer countries globally will wait far longer than richer nations to be inoculated.
Although infection numbers and death rates are comparatively lower across most of Africa, cases are spiking again in some areas.
A new variant of Covid-19 in South Africa is causing particular alarm and makes up most of the new cases.
“As a result of our own efforts we have so far secured a commitment of a provisional amount of 270 million vaccines from three major suppliers: Pfizer, AstraZeneca (through Serum Institute of India) and Johnson & Johnson,” President Ramaphosa said on Wednesday.
“At least 50 million of the doses will be available “for the crucial period of April to June 2021,” he said.
Africa has a population of 1.3 billion people and with each person needing at least two vaccine jabs, the continent would need around 2.6 billion doses to eventually vaccinate everyone.
“These endeavours aim to supplement the Covax efforts, and to ensure that as many dosages of vaccine as possible become available throughout Africa as soon as possible,” he explained.
Africa has recorded more than three million cases of Covid-19 and nearly 75,000 deaths.