China says Covid-19 vaccines for Africa is ‘top priority’

China has started putting in place the logistics to supply its promised extra 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Africa. Senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi, on his second visit to the continent this year, said supply and transport of the vaccines to African countries would be arranged as soon as possible. “Closing the immunisation gap and addressing the inequity of vaccine distribution is a top priority,” he told Chinese state news agency Xinhua in Sierra Leone on Monday. Yang’s visit to Freetown followed hard on the heels of President Xi Jinping’s pledge of a further 1 billion doses to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Dakar last week. China has also said it will undertake 10 medical and health assistance projects for African countries, send 1,500 medical staff and public health experts to the continent, and speed up the building of China-Africa friendship hospitals. The extra doses will include 600 million as donations, with the remainder to be jointly produced in Africa by Chinese and African companies. Beijing is also currently building a headquarters for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) in Ethiopia. Donated Chinese vaccines have already arrived in some countries – including Somalia and Djibouti – since Xi’s announcement via video link to the FOCAC meeting. Wu Peng, director general of the foreign ministry’s African affairs department, on Tuesday shared a tweet by the Chinese embassy in Somalia showing the arrival of half a million Sinopharm vaccines in the country. “We’re acting to implement President Xi Jinping’s commitment of providing another 1 billion doses of vaccines to Africa to help the [African Union] achieve its goal of vaccinating 60 per cent of [the] African population by 2022,” Wu said on Twitter. The discovery by South African scientists of the Omicron variant meant the need to address vaccine inequity in Africa was urgent, according to Folashade Soule, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford. “The pledge to provide 1 billion doses is a very bold move that responds to this urgency. It shows again that China’s cooperation with Africa is built on tangible actions first,” she said. Soule said the end game for China was to find local production sites for Chinese vaccine manufacturers. “What the unequal access to vaccines highlights is a lack of manufacturing factories for vaccine production on the continent.” A global pledge to ‘not disrupt international traffic’ in a pandemic lies broken Several African countries have already signed agreements with Chinese manufacturers to produce vaccines locally. A Sinovac plant funded by China was launched in Egypt this year with an estimated annual production of 80 million vaccines, while another factory is being set up in Morocco. “So there is also a market opportunity for China here and I think these opportunities are also envisioned in the other 400 million doses pledged by Xi,” Soule said. In addition to China’s vaccine promises, the forum saw an agreement from Beijing to increase its investments in African low-emission projects, including photovoltaic, wind and other renewable energies. Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who were in Dakar for the event, held meetings with several of their African counterparts. Wang Yi took part in more than 30 events at the forum and met 25 African foreign ministers. Xi plays up roles for private sector in China-Africa trade and finance During his Sierra Leone visit, Yang said China would invest in low-carbon emission projects and stop building coal-fired power plants to help African countries fight the effects of climate change. “China will work with Africa to advocate green and low-carbon development, develop solar, wind and other renewable energy sources,” Yang told Xinhua, adding that China would help the continent avert “the old path of pollution first, treatment later” while continuing to advance industrialisation. In a meeting with Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio, Yang said China would boost cooperation in fields such as Covid-19 response, agriculture, fishery, education and infrastructure. “China is willing to further deepen coordination and cooperation with Sierra Leone in the United Nations and other multilateral organisations, safeguard the common interests of China and Africa, as well as developing countries at large,” he said. US promises fairer treatment for Africa as it seeks to counter China Bio said Sierra Leone firmly backed the one-China policy and supported the Beijing Olympic Winter Games. Yang’s latest Africa trip began in the Republic of Congo, where he met President Denis Sassou Nguesso and promised to help the central African country fight the Covid-19 pandemic and develop infrastructure and industrial estates. Yang’s visit to Congo-Brazzaville and Sierra Leone, and the back-to-back meetings of senior Chinese officials seemed like an effort to resolve problems, according to David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. In the case of Congo-Brazzaville, Shinn said “it might have something to do with final agreement on debt rescheduling”. In June, Xi agreed to restructure Congo-Brazzaville’s US$2.4 billion worth of loans. China agrees to second debt restructure for Republic of Congo In Sierra Leone, Shinn said China had agreed to provide funding for a deep-sea fisheries port at a location that became controversial for fear it would threaten the rainforest, adversely impact the tourist industry, and result in excessive fishing by the Chinese fishing fleet. Observers said the recent Chinese diplomatic advances into the continent could be driven by China’s worsening relations with the US and the West. Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said that with China’s deteriorating relations with the US, Europe and the West in general, “Chinese diplomacy is focusing a lot on the developing countries bloc these days – Africa, Latin America and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations”. She pointed out that in the past two weeks, “we’ve seen FOCAC, China-CELAC Forum, and China-Asean Summit”. The Forum of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held its third ministerial meeting last week, chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang.