Multilateralism in Crisis? Assessing the impact of COVAX in Africa

Introduction The emergence of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) led to a high index of mortality worldwide and continues threatening to push an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2021 (World Bank, 2020). This experience was strongly supported by the unavailability of COVID-19 vaccines because while these provide a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, they illuminate glaring inequalities between and within nations in terms of access to vaccines, health systems to administer them, infrastructure to store and transport them, as well as revealing issues of transparency in their distribution along with misinformation. The World Bank (2021) asserts that National access to effective vaccines against COVID-19 is being decided by a country’s financial and diplomatic clout rather than its actual health needs. This is according to leading academics and officials from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America. They note that this is because the planet has been divided between the rich North with rapid mass access to the vaccine and the Global South without. The World Bank (2021) further submits that in response to this global division, a completely new mindset is required to address the political issue of producing and distributing vaccines against COVID -19 in a fair, affordable way, that is one that views the virus and its impacts as more than just another disease and sees the pandemic for what it is, "a global crisis in a globalized world." Currently, COVID-19 vaccinations have been deployed and are available in several countries. There must however be efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy (VH) COVID-19, particularly in Africa as a continent in which vaccine hesitancy has already been recorded after new vaccines have been introduced. Therefore, this paper will explain the role of Multilateralism in the fight against COVID-19 in the African continent by emphasizing the vaccine distribution, access, vaccine hesitancy and other relevant developments in the region. In terms of structure, this paper will first provide a theoretical framework that explains the African case regarding vaccine distribution, highlighting the role of Multilateralism. Furthermore, it will explain the role of Multilateralism in the fight against COVID-19, discuss COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) in Africa. Challenges and alternatives will be provided according to the information previously discussed. The findings and analysis will be summarized in the conclusion