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.

This data demonstrates that the Royal Government of Cambodia received approximately over 12 million doses with the value of more than USD 86 million from major bilateral partners. China, in particular, remains the largest vaccine donor to Cambodia with 8.3 million doses equivalent to USD 58 million.

As of November 17, 2022, Egypt had administered around 100 million coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination doses, the highest number in Africa. Second in the ranking, Nigeria distributed 88 million vaccines against the virus. South Africa, which accumulated the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the continent, carried out roughly 38 million immunizations.

Africa still behind in the vaccination campaign

While 154 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered per 100 people in the world, the vaccination rate in Africa is 41 doses per 100 individuals. Besides being far slowest than the global average, the vaccination is marked by a striking divide between African countries. In February 2021, Africa started receiving vaccine supplies under the WHO-backed Covax facility. Additionally, some African nations purchased additional doses, while others were benefited from bilateral donations.

High acceptance of the coronavirus vaccine

While the COVID-19 vaccination still needs to gain pace in Africa, the majority of the continent’s population was willing to take a vaccine against the disease. According to a survey, nearly 80 percent of Africans would get vaccinated, once the immunizing is considered safe and effective. However, one in four people believed a COVID-19 vaccine would be unsafe. Over 9.1 million people in Africa were already infected by the virus since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

As of June 7, 2022, China had administered almost 3.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, representing around 28 percent of the 11.9 billion doses administered worldwide.

Vaccination rate

China has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the world. Nevertheless, the situation varies substantially between age groups. Unlike many other regions such as Japan and western Europe, the Chinese elderly population has a lower vaccination rate than the younger generations. As of March 2022, only around half of people aged above 80 were fully vaccinated in the country, while less than 20 percent had their booster vaccinations.

The insufficient vaccination rate among the most vulnerable group of the society partially explains China’s “Zero COVID” strategy, as many fear that the healthcare service will not be able to cope with the spread of COVID-19.

Chinese vaccines

As a major partner and stakeholder of BioNTech, the German developer of Comirnaty, Chinese pharmaceutical firm Fosun Pharma secured 100 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in the early days of the pandemic. Nevertheless, no mRNA vaccine received approval from the Chinese regulator and the majority of the doses secured by Fosun remained undelivered.

Sinovac and Sinopharm’s vaccines, the two most common COVID-19 vaccines in China, are both inactivated whole virus vaccines, which stimulate immune responses with killed SARS-CoV-2 virus. Despite having many advantages, they are significantly less effective than mRNA vaccines in preventing symptomatic illness and are especially problematic when encountering the latest Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

As of March 1, 2023, the total number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Algeria reached 271,448. Overall, the growth in the number of cases slowed down considerably from March 2022, also thanks to successful vaccination efforts in the country.

The pandemic in Algeria

The first case of COVID-19 in Algeria was confirmed in February 2020, when a man coming from Italy tested positive for the virus. Afterward, the virus spread rapidly in the country, causing the first deaths in March 2020. Overall, Algeria recorded a total of around 7,000 deaths, one of the highest mortality registered in Africa. Similar to the rest of the world, the Algerian government adopted measures to prevent the spread of the virus. These included partial and total lockdown, the closure of gyms, recreational areas, and beaches.

Vaccination campaign

Algeria officially started the vaccination campaign at the end of January 2021. After a slow start, the total number of vaccine doses administered began to grow considerably. Despite the acceleration of the campaign, the vaccination rate remained below the African average. The country obtained COVID-19 vaccines from different sources, namely from bilateral agreements as well as through the United Nations-led COVAX, an initiative aiming at delivering vaccines against COVID-19 to all countries worldwide.

As of April 25, 2022, Mauritius was the African country with the highest number of coronavirus (COVID-19) doses secured per capita. The country had received 3.12 COVID-19 vaccine doses per capita through bilateral agreements, donations, and the COVAX initiative. Seychelles and Rwanda followed with 2.33 and 2.24 doses per capita, respectively.

Nairobi has been the Kenyan county most affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. As of March 31, 2022, the capital registered most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, around 129 thousand. The amount corresponded to nearly 40 percent of the total cases in Kenya. In Kiambu, within the Nairobi Metropolitan Region, 19,778 infected people were registered, whereas Mombasa, Kenya's oldest and second largest city, had 17,794 cases. As of March 2021, Kenya started the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus with doses received through the COVAX initiative.

Kenya's economy rebounds amid vaccination campaign

The coronavirus outbreak had a significant negative impact on Kenya's economy. In the second quarter of 2020, the quarterly country’s GDP decreased by 5.5 percent, the first contraction in recent years. Around one year later, in the third quarter of 2021, Kenya already registered an improved economic performance, with the quarterly GDP growth rate measured at 9.9 percent. The educational sector pushed the result, with an expansion of 65 percent. Mining and quarrying, and accommodation and food services followed, each with a 25 percent growth rate.

Signs of recovery in the tourism sector

Extensively known for its rich nature and wildlife, Kenya felt dramatically the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the tourism industry. The sector's contribution to the country’s GDP roughly halved in 2020, compared to 2019. By the end of 2021, however, signals of recovery were already spotted. The monthly number of arrivals in both Jomo Kenyatta and Moi international airports in December that year corresponded to roughly 70 percent of that registered in December 2019. Additionally, as of March 2022, the bed occupancy rate in Kenyan hotels amounted to 57 percent, against 23 percent in March 2021.

As of June 27, 2022, around 93.7 million doses of Pfizer arrived in the Philippines. This was followed by Sinovac and AstraZeneca, with 56.11 million and 38.85 million vaccine doses, respectively.

COVID-19 vaccination in the Philippines started in March 2021.