Since 1991, Chinese diplomacy has devoted its first official trip of the year to Africa. This year is no exception to the rule. Wang Yi begins this Tuesday a tour of Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros: three countries, four days of visit to strengthen ties with the east of the continent, where it will be a question of economic, technological and military cooperation, but also of vaccines .
With our correspondent in Beijing, Stephane Lagarde
One billion doses of additional vaccines against Covid, of which 600 million in the form of donations were promised by the Chinese president on the occasion of the last China-Africa summit. Beijing wants to contribute to the construction of a “great immune wall”, to the “health shield” of developing countries, Wang Yi told of the new China agency upstream of this East African tour.
In particular through support for technology transfer and the creation of common vaccine factories on the continent, as requested by certain African colleagues on the eve of this visit during a video conference with the Africa director of the Chinese ministry. of Foreign Affairs, Wu Peng.
“ We have a vaccine co-production cooperation with Egypt, Morocco and Algeria, and we are in discussions with Nigeria on the subject. We of course take into account the requests from other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but that does not depend only on our will. The industrial capacities of these countries must also be able to build these vaccine production units. In any case, we have this desire to extend this medical cooperation, not simply in terms of Covid-19 vaccines, but also in other areas of health. Wu Peng detailed.
The African Union has set itself the target of vaccinating 60% of the continent by the end of this year, notably through Chinese vaccines. Despite Omicron’s uncertainty about the number of booster doses needed to protect against the disease.