The Canadian institution, in partnership with the African Union’s public health agency (Africa CDC), intends to be very active on the black continent in order to give substance to its initiative dubbed “Saving Lives and Communities.”
To great ills, great remedies… Faced with the threat of the new coronavirus, the MasterCard Foundation is committed to providing the necessary funds over the next three years to acquire vaccines “for at least 50 million people” in Africa. The announcement was made on Tuesday, June 8, during a virtual meeting.
In the race for vaccines, the black continent has been left behind, as “less than 2 percent of Africans” have received at least one dose of one of the vaccines on the market. The African Union (AU), in its strategy launched on August 20, 2020, has stated its ambition to immunize 60 percent of its population by the end of 2022. This accounts for approximately 750 million people or the entire adult population of Africa. To date, it is close to the five million infection mark with over 130,000 deaths.
For the success of its huge undertaking, the AU can now count on a structure that weighs more than $39 billion in assets. Speaking at the webinar, Reeta Roy, President and CEO of the MasterCard Foundation, emphasized the need to fulfill “a moral imperative” by addressing “inequities in access to the vaccine,” adding that “this initiative is about all lives and about speeding up the continent’s economic recovery.
The pandemic has plunged Africa into an economic recession unheard of in 25 years. The African Development Bank (AfDB) predicts that Covid-19 could wipe out “hard-earned gains in poverty reduction over the past two decades and push 39 million people into extreme poverty by 2021.
In the agreement between the MasterCard Foundation and Africa CDC, four major objectives are pursued. These are the purchase of “safe and effective” vaccines, (their) deployment, the development of human capital to build an ecosystem conducive to the manufacture of the precious liquid in Africa, and the strengthening of Africa CDC’s capacity.
In addition, both parties emphasized the anchoring of the initiative in several key principles and values, namely inclusion of all African countries and communities, equity to reflect country circumstances and needs, accountability by using resources appropriately, efficiently and transparently, empowerment of Africa through the empowerment of governments, public health institutions and implementing organizations, collaboration between member states and relevant partners on the ground, and improvement of national health systems through smart investments.
The new agreement will build on the efforts of the Global Covid Vaccine Access Program (COVAX), the African Vaccine Procurement Task Force (AVATT), and the international community, among others. If combined, the two mechanisms are expected to provide the African population with 45-50 percent of the vaccines they need. That is a 10-15 percent gap for the African Union to fill.
All in all, Dr. John Nkengasong, the Director of Africa CDC, maintained that the partnership with the Mastercard Foundation is “a bold step towards establishing a new public health order for Africa. The Cameroonian-born virologist therefore invited governments, international donors, the private sector and other actors “to enter this historic movement.”
The MasterCard Foundation is not a novice in this area. It has previously supported Africa CDC to “expand access to testing kits and strengthen surveillance capacity in Africa.” With its support, the AU’s specialized agency has conducted more than 47 million Covid tests on the continent and trained over 12,000 health workers.
Moussa Faki Mahamat, The President of the African Union Commission, also participating in the virtual meeting, expressed optimism that with “this unprecedented partnership” in the history of the AU, “a new page in the fight against the pandemic is opening” on the continent.
ID/fss/abj/APA