China in Fight Against COVID-19 and Its Consequences for Africa

The article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Africa and China’s involvement in the fight against COVID-19 and its negative consequences for African healthcare and the African economy. The aim of the paper is to assess the scale of the COVID-19 threat to Africa and the results of Beijing’s medical aid to the continent. China is the large exporter of medicines and the provider of healthcare to Africa. The author assesses the role of the Chinese state, companies and private businesses in the fight against the malaria, HIV/AIDS, and Ebola epidemics in Africa. When the pandemic affected Africa, Beijing sent medicines and protective equipment, doctors and medical personnel, and built and renovated hospitals. Donations of masks, testing kits and medical equipment were made by private individuals, such as billionaire Jack Ma. Seven Chinese medical teams were sent to 25 African countries, and 46 African hospitals participated in cooperation with Chinese hospitals. China accelerated the building of African Disease Control Centers. At the Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity in the Fight against Pandemic COVID-19 in Beijing on 17 June 2020 Xi Jinping declared that African countries would be among the first to get Chinese vaccines. As the author shows, China has kept its promise. The pandemic has damaged the African economies. Many nations fell into recession and faced a growing debt crisis. China has offered financial support to individual African countries and to Africa as a whole. In January 2021, China’s Foreign Minister Wan Yi paid a traditional visit to Africa. His visit came against a backdrop of the racial tensions between China and Africa after coronavirus related discrimination against African nationals in the city of Guangzhou in April 2020. Wan Yi tried to make more attractive image of China in Africa. In Nigeria, he signed an agreement to establish an intergovernmental committee, in the DRC he postponed the repayment of interest-free loans from China that matured at the end of 2020, in Tanzania he launched a training college. Wan Yi also visited the Seychelles, which received a donation of 50 000 doses of Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. Xi Jinping pledged that African vaccination was a “priority” for Beijing. This was confirmed in November 2021 at the 8th FOCAC conference in Dakar, Senegal, where the supply of Chinese vaccines to the continent was one of the main issues discussed. The medical and healthcare program, adopted by the conference, foresees the supply of 1 bn doses of anti-COVID-19 vaccine to get inoculation 60% of the African population in 2022.