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href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Why-Africa-Gets-Fewer-Jabs-Roots-of-Vaccine-Apartheid-20210404-0004.html">https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Why-Africa-Gets-Fewer-Jabs-Roots-of-Vaccine-Apartheid-20210404-0004.html</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Why Africa Gets Fewer Jabs: Roots of
Vaccine Apartheid</h1>
April 4, 2021</div>
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<p>Since then, "Africa accounts for the lowest number of
doses that has been administered per 100 people (only
0.7 doses), compared to 5.0 doses for Asia, 8.0 doses
for South America, 16 doses for Europe, and 27 for North
America. At the current rate, the continent is expected
to only reach herd immunity in 2023 at the earliest",
according to Uwagbale Edward-Ekpu, a Nigerian journalist
specialized in Science and Technology.</p>
<p>At least five African countries could be able to
develop and produce their own vaccines in order to avoid
this "Vaccine Apartheid," but they have chosen no to do
so, reports Edward-Ekpu in Quartz, relying instead on
imported technology.</p>
The fundamental reason for all this, says Stern, lies on
IMF and World Bank-promoted structural adjustment programs
implemented in Africa in the 1980's, which forced
governments to adopt neoliberal economic policies, that in
turn focused not only on restructuring services, finance
and industry, but also on a cultural revolution of sorts.
<br>
<p>Regarding Covid19, "the optimism that Africa would be
spared by "early lockdown", "less dense population, "the
effect of ultraviolet", "a climate that meant people
spent more time outside" and "Africa's youthful
population" has rapidly faded. Officially there are now
more than 100,000 deaths on the continent, but the real
numbers are much higher due to the paucity of testing
and the lack of capacity to accurately track and
evaluate causes of mortality".</p>
"Following independence, higher education was a key part
of the national development project and was aimed at
training Africans to take on vital new roles as doctors,
teachers, lawyers, civil servants, and economists", Stern
says.
<p>"Economic curriculum in universities theorized about
the nature of Africa's integration into the global
economy and the domestic policies needed to enhance
development. Debates on the government strategies drew
on diverse theoretical traditions such as institutional
and structural economics. There was a general consensus
on the need for African countries to use government
tools to build an industrial base."</p>
Shocking neoliberal policies triggered resistance from
African academic quarters, but the very same policies
meant that African universities and institutes began to be
grossly underfunded. "The World Bank and other donors
realized that opposition could be demobilized, and
"ownership" generated by incorporating the economics
profession into the Western economic model", Stern
says."Neoliberalism loosened restrictions on capital
flows, privatized state enterprises, and liberalized trade
undermining local manufacturing capacity leading to more
reliance on imports of manufacturing goods including
pharmaceuticals and other health commodities. Increasingly
African countries became more dependent on exporting
unprocessed raw materials for foreign exchange. Hence,
adjustment led to the deindustrialization of the continent
and returned Africa to its colonial style extraction
economy with its problematic boom and bust commodity
cycles. Manufacturing fell from 18% of GDP in 1980 to only
7%-9% after 2000".Following this path, Nigeria's
Edward-Ekpu points out, the Afrieximbanks is ready to
lend African countries up to 2 billion dollars to purchase
US and European-manufactured vaccines, while the cost of
developing an independent jab would cost a fraction of
that: between $8 million to $350 million, which nobody
seems willing to fund.Edward-Ekpu underlines the sharp
contrast between middle-income African countries policies
such as Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Senegal,
with counterparts like India, Cuba, India, Vietnam,
Kazakhstan, Turkey, Thailand, and Iran, all of which are
developing vaccines and conducting clinical tests.
<p>Not by accident, at the very outset of the Covid19
pandemic, Cuba launched a national crusade involving
dozens of state pharma and biotech enterprises as well
as research institutes, universities and hospitals, to
develop its own vaccine, which was -also not by chance-
named Soberana (Sovereign).</p>
Five different vaccines are under development in the
blockaded socialist island, two of them in the final
stages of phase-three clinical trials. Cuba aims at
producing 100 million doses, inoculate 100 percent of its
population by midyear.
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