Germany will make up to 70 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine available to African countries this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday, more than doubling a previous pledge to donate 30 million.
“Germany will make available not only 30 million doses of vaccines but it will be as much as 70 million doses,” Merkel told a news conference after a summit with African leaders on the G20’s Compact with Africa initiative.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said African leaders told the summit “it is not fair that Africa has vaccinated only 2% of the their 1.3 billion population and yet the more developed countries in the north have vaccinated up to 60%.”
“All of us in that meeting felt that Africa needs to be given the opportunity and the right to produce vaccines,” he said at the joint news conference with Merkel.
Merkel said she was confident that there could be a “transfer, step by step, of the technology” to allow production of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.
