JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP)— After a slow start, Africa has shifted up a gear in coronavirus vaccine procurement, securing hundreds of millions of jabs from pooling initiatives amid efforts to gain ground in the global inoculation race.

So far only a small handful of African countries have started immunising their populations against COVID-19, starting with the Seychelles and more recently Mauritius.

Wealthier nations have been accused of bulk-buying excess doses directly from manufacturers — limiting supply and securing better deals than governments with less purchasing clout.

Most African countries are relying on the World Health Organization (WHO) and the African Union (AU) to shoulder at least part of their inoculation campaigns by providing vaccines and helping to finance their rollout.

The AU announced Thursday that it had secured 400 million doses of COVID-19 jabs for its members in addition to 270 million doses trailed earlier this month.

The WHO-backed Covax sharing facility is meanwhile said to be on track to deliver 600 million vaccines to the continent by the end of 2021.

Some African countries have also started negotiating directly with suppliers.

Algeria reached a deal this month to buy Russia’s contentious Sputnik-V vaccine, while Senegal is in talks to acquire doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

South Africa, the continent’s worst virus-hit country, is expecting a first batch of 1.5 million Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines on February 1.

Africa’s most industrialised economy will also get nine million shots from Johnson & Johnson, if its vaccine is approved, and is negotiating with other undisclosed manufacturers.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI received a vaccine against the coronavirus on Thursday, the palace said. 

It added that Morocco’s nationwide free-to-all vaccination campaign will “roll out progressively and in tranches, reaching all Moroccan citizens and residents aged 17 and over” — some 25 million people.

The virus has ravaged the densely populated cities of Casablanca and Sale, near Rabat.

– ‘Ramp up’ –

During the virtual 2021 World Economic Forum this week, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa lashed “vaccine nationalism,” accusing rich countries of hoarding doses to the detriment of poorer counterparts. 

It is estimated Africa will need 1.5 billion vaccines to immunise 60 per cent of its 1.3 billion inhabitants — a potential threshold for herd immunity against COVID.

But the WHO on Thursday cautioned that Covax and the AU combined would only be able to deliver jabs for around one third of the continent this year.

“Reaching 30-35 per cent (of the African population) could be a realistic assumption by the end of 2021,” WHO Africa’s immunisation coordinator Richard Mihigo said during a virtual press briefing.

Africa was likely to receive its first Covax vaccines before mid-February, he added, without specifying which countries would come first.

“By March we will definitely see most of the countries start vaccinating,” Mihigo predicted.

“It is a slow start, but we are expecting that in the coming months things are going to ramp up.”

While the AU says it has secured 670 million doses, delivery is expected to be slower, with only 50 million vaccines promised for between April and June so far.

The bulk of these pooled provisions will be Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines, followed by a few million Pfizer-BioNTech jabs.