COVID-19 Vaccines: Africa’s Dependence On Hand-Outs

EARLIER in the month, Nigeria took a delivery of 3.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines under the COVAX global vaccines initiative, the largest consignment yet received.
IN the coming months, Nigeria will receive additional 42 million doses of the vaccines under the initiative, as the nation grapples to vaccinate approximately 109 million people that will be eligible for vaccination in the next two years.
TO accomplish this objective, the federal government plans to inoculate 40% of Nigerians this year, and another 30% in 2022.
In the case of Africa, the continent has secured close to 900 million doses from various initiatives, enough to inoculate only 30% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people.
THOUGH we commend efforts by wealthy nations of the West in providing free vaccines to nations such as Nigeria, we strongly feel it’s time for the country to embark on the domestic production of COVID-19 vaccines for her teeming population.
NEEDLESS to say, vaccine nationalism means the West has already pre-ordered the bulk of potential vaccines, leaving countries like Nigeria in the lurch.
IN hard terms, this means vaccine nationalism by the West has led to their hoarding, slowing down the roll-out process in African nations such as Nigeria.
WITH half of Nigerians living below the poverty line, their possibility of using vaccines produced on the commercial basis in the West is far-fetched, putting them at the mercy of the dreaded disease.
FOR this country to inoculate the entirety of her citizens, it will have to cough out a substantial amount of its hard-earned foreign exchange to procure expensive COVID-19 vaccines from the West.
TO worsen the situation, despite the amount of free vaccines earmarked for Africa, they won’t be enough to go round anxious Nigerians.
IN other words, since most of the developed vaccines were not carried out in the continent, as Africa lacks the power to fund or to secure vaccines for her people, the continent has to rely on free vaccines made by other races.
Since the continent is in a recession period, forex requirements for the vaccines could prove crippling in the short and long run.
BUT if African nations including Nigeria had been serious all this while about producing their own vaccines, they won’t have to depend on handouts from donor agencies to respond to the COVID-19 challenges as related to vaccines.
THOUGH Israel has just a population of six million people, it used its local scientists to produce an effective vaccine for her nationals, and the country is in the lead among nations that have rolled out the product to combat COVID-19.
SOME might say it’s a tall ambition, but Nigeria, nay Africa, can copy nations such as Israel by using her local scientists and resources to make the vaccines.
WITH such vaccines, African countries including Nigeria will not have to cope with the rapacious nationalism exercised by the West in relation to COVID-19.
FOR a continent in a state of economic recession, capital flight related to COVID-19 will be drastically reduced through a local production of vaccines, with her forex better spent elsewhere.
BESIDES, locally produced vaccines will mean Nigeria and other African countries will not need to cope with problems such as the hoarding by wealthy nations, slow-down in the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines and shortages in the product.
THEREFORE, The Hope calls on the federal government to speed up the process leading to domestic vaccine production in a bid to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
NIGERIA should emulate Israel by patronizing her local scientists on this venture, especially as many of such people abound.
FOR instance, the federal government should work with scientists such as Professor Christian Happi, a molecular scientist at the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, who claim to have developed a vaccine candidate.
IT should also look into the veracity of the COVID-19 claims by scientists such as Dr. Oladipo Kolawole of the Adeleke University, who said his team has developed locally a vaccine meant for Africans.
THE federal government should upgrade the National Veterinary Research Institute in Vom, Plateau State from an institution producing vaccines for livestock to one that provides vaccines for human use.
THE government should collaborate with African nations such as Madagascar, which has been using its local traditional medicine developed in the country.
THE government should appreciate the need for vaccines produced by Africans and for the peculiar needs of Africans, especially as the vaccines from the West increasingly show problems such as blood clot and others.
THE governments across Africa in general should take their destiny in their hands, instead of being victims of vaccine nationalism as exhibited by wealthy nations.