COVID-19 vaccines are finally starting to make their way to the world’s poorest countries as production of Chinese, Russian and Indian jabs ramps up. But it’s the large-scale distribution of Chinese vaccines that’s causing a lot of people around the world, particularly in U.S. and European countries, to become increasingly worried about the geopolitical ramifications.

In Africa, the Chinese have exported vaccines to half a dozen countries and are in talks with dozens more to make jabs available in the coming months. Similarly, a new air bridge between the two regions is now operational that will facilitate the transportation and distribution of vaccines throughout Africa.

Nwachukwu Egbunike, the Sub-Saharan Community Manager for the independent journalism website Global Voices, says the West isn’t in a good position to complain about China’s “vaccine diplomacy” given how little they’re doing to help the situation. Nwachukwu joins Eric & Cobus to discuss a two-part series he wrote on the geopolitical ramifications of COVID-19 vaccine distribution for China, Africa and Western countries.

Show Notes:

• Global Voices: COVID-19 vaccine in Africa – Caught between China’s soft-power diplomacy and the West’s vaccine nationalism (PART 1) by Nwachukwu Egbunike
• Global Voices: COVID-19 vaccine in Africa – Caught between China’s soft-power diplomacy and the West’s vaccine nationalism (PART 2) by Nwachukwu Egbunike
• Deutsche Welle: Coronavirus vaccines could cement Africa’s relationship with China by Silja Fröhlich

About Nwachukwu Egbunike:

Nwachukwu Egbunike is a writer, social media scholar and publisher who lives in Ibadan, Nigeria. Egbunike is the author of Dyed Thoughts: a conversation in and from my country (2012), Blazing Moon (joint first runner-up winner of the 2015 Association of Nigeria Authors Prize for Poetry), Hashtags: social media, politics and ethnicity in Nigeria (2018), and a forthcoming collection of poems Nka.