The United Kingdom government has announced an investment of 20 million pounds in African Union’s “Africa anti-COVID-19 fund” to curb the spread of coronavirus on the continent. It also promised to help train African health experts to tackle the pandemic.

The UK embassy, in a statement on Thursday, said that the fund would tackle the pandemic by recruiting African health experts and deploying them where they are needed most, while also strengthening global tracking of the pandemic, combatting potentially harmful misinformation, providing specialist coronavirus training for health workers and making information about the virus more accessible to the public.

The UK noted that the fund would equally support African leaders and technical experts to slow the spread of coronavirus and save lives in Africa and worldwide.

The statement quoted International Development Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, while announcing the funding on Wednesday, that as the UK faces its biggest peacetime challenge in tackling coronavirus, it has never been more important to work with her partners in Africa to fight disease.

Trevelyan added: “No one is safe until we are all safe and this new funding and support for African leadership will help protect us all – in the UK, Africa and around the world – from further spread of the virus.”

According to the statement, this makes the UK the largest national donor to the fund which was announced by Cyril Ramaphosa, Chairperson of the African Union (AU) and South Africa President, Cyril Ramaphosa, last month.

The statement further said recruited African health experts would be deployed to where they were most needed, to strengthen global effort to track the pandemic.

Also, the experts would help in combating potentially harmful misinformation, providing specialist coronavirus training for health workers and make information about the virus more accessible to the public.
About 800 skilled African expert volunteers would be recruited and deployed through Africa CDC’s African Voluntary Health Corps to track the outbreak through effective screening, contact tracing and information management.

They will also help in combatting misinformation; creating an online community of practice with weekly webinars for African clinicians; publishing technical guidelines in all AU languages; creating an Africa task force for coronavirus to co-ordinate response activity, and convening AU member states to agree a continental response.

The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, said the truly global scale of the current crisis meant that international cooperation and solidarity was more important than ever.

The £20 million UK funding contribution to the AU, the High Commissioner said, would provide important additional support to Nigeria and other countries across Africa.

She said the contribution was also a testament to the UK government’s resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nigeria in their collective challenge to defeat COVID-19.

The announcement followed calls by the UK Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, AU Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Albert Muchanga and AU Commissioner for Social Affairs Amira El-Fadil.

They discussed the risks Africa faces from the pandemic and how the UK was working with partners on the continent to tackle these shared global crisis.

Besides, the virtual Global Vaccine Summit is scheduled for June 4, to secure future funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which has already saved the lives of millions of children in Africa from infectious diseases.

With many African countries experiencing increases in COVID-19 cases, the people are exposed to severe risks to their fragile healthcare systems.