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As of March 15, 2023, Seychelles was the African country with the highest coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination rate, with around 205 doses administered per 100 individuals. Mauritius and Rwanda followed with 201 and 190 doses per 100 people, respectively. Ranking fourth, Morocco had a vaccination rate of approximately 148 doses per 100 people, registering the third-highest number of inoculations after Egypt and Nigeria. In South Africa, the most affected country on the continent, the vaccination rate instead reached around 64 per 100 population.

How did Africa obtain the vaccines?

Vaccines in Africa were obtained in different ways. African nations both purchased new doses and received them from other countries. At the beginning of the vaccination campaigns, donations came from all over the world, such as China, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Russia. The United Nations-led COVAX initiative provided Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech doses to several African countries. Within this program, the continent received nearly 270 million doses as of January 2022. Moreover, the vaccination campaign has also been an occasion for intra-African solidarity. Senegal has, for instance, donated vaccines to the Gambia, while in January 2021, Algeria announced that it would have shared its supply with Tunisia.

COVID-19 impact on the African economy

The spread of COVID-19 negatively affected socio-economic growth in Africa, with the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracting significantly in 2020. Specifically, Southern Africa experienced the sharpest decline, at minus six percent, followed by North Africa at minus 1.7 percent. Most of Africa’s key economic sectors were hit by the pandemic. The drop in global oil prices led to a crisis in the oil and gas sector. Nigeria, the continent’s leading oil-exporting country, witnessed a considerable decrease in crude oil trade in 2020. Moreover, the shrinking number of international tourist arrivals determined a loss of over 12 million jobs in Africa’s travel and tourism sector. Society has also been substantially affected by COVID-19 on the poorest continent in the world, and the number of people living in extreme poverty was estimated to increase by around 30 million in 2020.