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00:00Now the COVID-19 pandemic exposed Africa's vaccine vulnerability.
00:04Leaders from the continent, the pharmaceutical industry and international healthcare were in
00:08Paris on Thursday for a summit on how to prepare Africa to eventually make the shots required to
00:14meet its own needs. Our Aline Bottin headed out for us.
00:24I'm here in the heart of Paris at the French Foreign Affairs Ministry where several African
00:29heads of state including from Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal met on Wednesday for the
00:35Global Forum on Vaccine Sovereignty and Innovation. Moussa Faki, the chairperson of the African
00:42Union Commission also made an appearance reflecting just how important these conversations
00:48are for the continent. As evidenced by Africa's scramble for timely access to COVID-19 inoculations
00:55the continent's reliance on imported doses has to change. Senegal's President Basirou Dioumaifi
01:01and Rwandan leader Paul Kagame emphasized the cost of these global disparities in their speeches here.
01:10According to the UNICEF report of 2021, 23 million children didn't receive the basic
01:16vaccines necessary for their normal development at the height of the pandemic.
01:21So the African Union is working with Gavi, the vaccine alliance, on a push to drastically ramp
01:28up Africa's capacity to produce vaccines. Gavi set out a five-year roadmap which it estimates
01:36it will need around nine billion dollars to achieve. This includes expanding stockpiles
01:42of vaccines to cope with expected increases in disease outbreaks. Also in the spotlight was the
01:49launch of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, AVMA, one of the mechanisms set up
01:57to finance the development of a sustainable African vaccine manufacturing ecosystem.
02:03Today 20 percent of the world's population is in Africa but its vaccine industry only provides
02:09around 0.1 percent of global supplies. The African Union seeks to manufacture at least 60 percent of
02:17the total vaccine doses required on the continent by 2040.