The Mastercard Foundation has announced that it will deploy$1.3 billion over the next three years in partnership with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) tosave the lives and livelihoodsof millions of people in Africa andhasten the economic recovery of the continent.

The SavingLives and Livelihoodsinitiativewill acquire vaccines forat least50 millionpeople, support the delivery of vaccinations to millions more across the continent, lay the groundwork for vaccine manufacturing in Africa through a focus on human capital development, and strengthen the Africa CDC.

“Ensuring equitable access and deliveryof vaccines across Africa is urgent. This initiative is about valuing all lives and accelerating the economic recovery of the continent,” said Reeta Roy, President and CEO of the Mastercard Foundation. “In the process, this initiative will catalyzeworkopportunities in the health sector and beyond as part of ourYoung Africa Works strategy,” she added.

The African Union’s goal as set out in the African COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy is to vaccinate at least 60 percent of its population –approximately 750 million people or the entire adult population of the continent –by the end of2022.To date, less than two percent of Africans have received at least one vaccine dose.

The new partnership builds on the efforts of the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access facility (COVAX), the COVID-19
AfricanVaccineAcquisition Task Team(AVATT),and the global community to expand access to vaccines across Africa. The number of vaccines available to Africa representsa small portion of the global supply and the financial costs to purchase, deliver, and administer vaccines remain significant. The Africa CDC is calling on governments, global funders, the private sector, and others to help meet this goal.

“Ensuring inclusivity in vaccine access, and building Africa’s capacity to manufacture its own vaccines, is not just good for the continent, it’s the only sustainable path out of the pandemic and into a health-secure future,” said Dr. John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa CDC. “This partnership with the Mastercard Foundation is a bold step towards establishing a New Public Health Order for Africa, and we welcome other actors to join this historic journey.”

In 2020, Africa faced its first economic recession in 25 years due to the pandemic. The African Development Bank has warned that COVID-19 could reverse hard-won gains in 2poverty reduction over the past two decades and drive 39 million people into extreme poverty in 2021. Widespread vaccination is recognized as being critical to the economic recovery of African countries.

Theinitiative builds on an earlier collaboration between the Mastercard Foundation and the Africa CDC to expand access to testing kits and enhance surveillance capacity in Africa.Through the Foundation’s support, the Africa CDC’s Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT)deployednearly twomillion COVID-19 tests and more than 12,000trainedhealth care workers and rapid respondersacross Africa. In total, the PACT has enabled over 47 million COVID-19 tests across the continent.