African Leaders have been urged to request China to establish industries and companies in African countries to produce vaccines by themselves.
The call was made by the Director Centre for Planning Studies, Lagos State University, Professor Ayo Omotayo, saying that it will be profitable to establish companies in African countries so as to help Africa to move forward.
Professor Omotayo in his opinion urged China to establish industries and companies in some African countries especially Nigeria and Senegal so as to produce those vaccines.
He said that China has the money to help African countries to install some technologies to produce vaccines if actually they want to fight the coronavirus pandemic
Professor Omotayo urged China to support African countries in area of finance so that they can produce the vaccine by themselves since Africans have the capabilities in terms of personnel.
Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that China would offer another one billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines to African countries and would encourage Chinese companies to invest no less than $10b in Africa across the next three years.
The Chinese leader said that his country would donate 600,000,000 doses directly.
A further four hundred million doses would come from other sources, such as investments in production sites.
Xi’s promise was made in Dakar at the forum on China-African cooperation with an emphasis on trade and security.
Vaccination rates in Africa are low compared with the rest of the world, with many states at the mercy of foreign donations due to the lack of local production facilities and prohibitive costs of mass purchases.
The eighth edition of the forum for China-Africa Corporation took place in Dakar, Senegal, from November 29 to 30, 2021 under the theme “Deepen China-Africa Partnership and Promote Sustainable Development to Build a China-Africa Community with a Shared Future in the New Era”.
Nneka Ukachukwu
