48 African nations set to miss Covid vaccine target - with just 7% of continent vaccinated

An estimated 1.2 billion people in Africa are still not vaccinated against Covid-19, with dozens of countries likely to miss global vaccination targets, NationalWorld can reveal.

Nearly 50 countries across the continent are lagging behind in achieving the Covid-19 Task Force’s goal of fully vaccinating 40% of their population by the end of the year.

In five nations, less than 1% of the population has been fully vaccinated.

More than 10.4 million jabs are needed each day just to give the 40% of unvaccinated Africans a first dose of protection by the end of the year. As of 22 November 95.7 million people were fully vaccinated - less than 10% of the continent’s population.

The analysis comes as the UK Government puts six African countries on its travel red list after the emergence of the new B.1.1.529 variant.

The global vaccine race

Analysis by NationalWorld of data sourced from OurWorldinData reveals just 7% of Africa’s total population is fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

In comparison Europe has fully vaccinated more than half (57%) of its total population and already has a well established booster programme with nearly 50 million extra shots administered.

In Africa just 324,000 third doses have been administered.

The Covid-19 Taskforce, also known as the Multilateral Leaders Task Force on Covid-19, aims to vaccinate at least 40 percent of people in every country by the end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by mid-2022.

The taskforce is made up of The International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization to help low and middle income countries access coronavirus vaccines and therapies.

Nearly 100 countries have not yet hit the 40% target, including nine European countries - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Albania, Russia, Romania and North Macedonia.

Countries in Africa are showing extremely low vaccination rates.

Five African countries have vaccinated less than 1% of their total population.

Burundi currently has the worst vaccination rate of all countries in the world. As of 18 November the central east African country had fully vaccinated just 494 people, representing 0.004% of the total population.

This is followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo which has fully vaccinated 46,256 people (0.1% of its total population) and Chad which has fully vaccinated 70,521 people (0.4% of its total population).

South Sudan has also vaccinated 0.58% of its population and Guinea-Bissau has vaccinated 0.91%.

Not all of Africa is behind with vaccinations though as the Seychelles, Mauritius and Morocco have all fully vaccinated more than 60% of their population.

Vaccination figures are based on the country’s most recent available data.

‘Vaccine nationalism’

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is co-leading the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative which has already shipped 507 million vaccines to countries in need.

A Gavi spokesperson said: “The Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative represents the most effective model the world has for bringing an end to the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“However it cannot achieve this goal alone and governments, businesses and multilateral agencies must all urgently redouble their efforts to help overcome vaccine nationalism and global supply constraints so that COVAX can deliver on its goal.”

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