We are wit­ness­ing a con­tem­po­rary tale of Eu­ro-Amer­i­can racism keep­ing Africa and oth­er parts of the sup­pressed world short of life-sav­ing an­ti-COVID-19 vac­cines.

Strive Masiyi­wa, Spe­cial En­voy to the African Vac­cine Ac­qui­si­tion Task Team (AVATT) tells the com­pelling sto­ry of the “de­lib­er­ate, not in­ci­den­tal ar­chi­tec­ture of un­fair­ness.” This he says is ef­fec­tive­ly de­priv­ing Africa of ad­e­quate sup­plies of an­ti-COVID-19 vac­cines.

Masiyi­wa is a Lon­don-based Zim­bab­wean bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man. In­ter­viewed on US CN­BC tele­vi­sion, the en­voy says the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty, which is an ef­fort of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and oth­er agen­cies to se­cure vac­cines for the non-vac­cine pro­duc­ing coun­tries of the world, would be found cul­pa­ble if ever there was an in­quiry “be­cause we were mis­led.”

“We got to De­cem­ber of 2020 be­liev­ing the whole world was com­ing to­geth­er to pur­chase vac­cines, not know­ing we were cor­ralled whilst oth­ers ran off and se­cured the sup­plies. That is what CO­V­AX was sup­posed to do,” ex­claims Masiyi­wa. Af­ter that dis­ap­point­ment he said AVATT ap­proached the man­u­fac­tur­ers of the de­vel­oped world “to pur­chase, with cash in hand, vac­cines. We were not ask­ing for a gift. We were told that all ca­pac­i­ty for 2021 had al­ready been sold. Need­less to say, African coun­tries were not in­clud­ed in that arrange­ment: “How can that be,” the leader of AVATT is hor­ri­fied by such ex­clu­sion­ist poli­cies. He said though, they of­fered 500,000 dos­es: “How can that be fair for a con­ti­nent with 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple,” asked the African en­voy not­ing the dis­re­spect.

In Jan­u­ary of 2021, CO­V­AX promised to de­liv­er 20 per cent of the needs of Africa and oth­er parts of the non-Eu­ro­pean world. He said Africa protest­ed point­ing out that the Eu­ro-Amer­i­ca com­bine was as­sured of achiev­ing a 70 per cent vac­ci­na­tion. Af­ter the team made ar­gu­ments to sup­port the need for Africa to be as­sured of ad­e­quate sup­plies of vac­cines, they were promised 30 per cent of what was re­quired. On that ba­sis, they were sched­uled to re­ceive 700 mil­lion dos­es. In­stead, they re­ceived a mere 30 mil­lion, says the sad­ly dis­ap­point­ed leader of the African team.

All the while Africa was in its third wave of in­fec­tion, Masiyi­wa ob­serves. He iden­ti­fies the de­pri­va­tion of Africa and oth­er de­pen­dent coun­tries “as no moral fail­ure, it was de­lib­er­ate. Those with the pro­duc­tion as­sets pushed their way to the front of the que and took con­trol of the vac­cines.”

The fun­da­men­tal de­vel­op­ment prob­lem reach­es in­to the struc­ture of de­pen­dence. To ex­plain and il­lus­trate his con­tention of the re­la­tion­ship of de­pen­dence, Masiyi­wa cites the ban­ning by the US and Eu­rope of ex­ports of the vi­tal in­gre­di­ents nec­es­sary to pro­duce the vac­cines, ef­fec­tive­ly de­ter­min­ing which coun­tries can pro­duce the vac­cines.

With­out seek­ing to give a good name to John­son and John­son, which is now pro­duc­ing vac­cines in South Africa for African us­age, the Zim­bab­wean busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive notes that Nige­ria, Egypt, Dakar–Sene­gal al­so have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce the vac­cines for Africa’s needs.

That ex­clu­sion from pro­duc­tion is the source of the con­tin­u­ing un­der-de­vel­op­ment of two-thirds of the world pop­u­la­tion.

The fun­da­men­tal in­ten­tion of the orig­i­na­tors and lead­ers of the con­tem­po­rary world with its ori­gins in the Age of Dis­cov­ery of 500 years ago is to con­tin­ue its dom­i­na­tion with lit­tle con­cern for the rest of hu­man­i­ty.

Any no­tion that the side­lined ma­jor­i­ty can get a bet­ter deal with­out fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion from the de­pen­dence mod­el of the con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dis­pen­sa­tion is pipe dream­ing. The philo­soph­i­cal think­ing of the 16th cen­tu­ry that blacks and oth­er non-white peo­ples were not ful­ly hu­man con­tin­ues.

Those philo­soph­i­cal po­si­tions are ful­ly dis­cernible in the man­age­ment of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

If there were any doubts about the un­der­ly­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion prac­ticed by Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, the re­cent is­su­ing of a “Green Vac­cine Pass­port” (Cer­tifi­cate) for trav­el to and with­in Eu­rope is the ev­i­dence. To ac­quire the cer­tifi­cate, peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed with the As­traZeneca (and three oth­er se­lect vac­cines) must have got them from Eu­ro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ers. So all of us in T&T, the Caribbean and else­where who re­ceived the AZ from In­dia do not qual­i­fy to trav­el to Eu­rope.

What is amaz­ing about the con­tin­u­ing racism (and we have to say what it is) is the short­sight­ed­ness of the per­pe­tra­tors. A big­ot so en­gulfed in hate can­not see how his racist be­liefs and prac­tices will ul­ti­mate­ly neg­a­tive­ly im­pact his own life.

The US-Eu­rope com­bine can­not build a wall around it­self and ex­pect to sur­vive and pros­per with­out the rest of the non-Eu­ro­pean world. For in­stance, will Eu­ro­peans be able to trav­el to coun­tries whose cit­i­zens/res­i­dents have not had the Eu­ro­pean man­u­fac­tured AZ vac­cine?

Will Eu­rope be able to trade ef­fec­tive­ly with third coun­try peo­ples with­out Eu­ro­pean made AZs? When coun­try lead­ers take de­ci­sions so ob­vi­ous­ly based on his­tor­i­cal racist ide­ol­o­gy notwith­stand­ing the neg­a­tive im­pact it has on their own coun­tries, that is in­dica­tive of the over­pow­er­ing ef­fect that racist ide­ol­o­gy has on them.

The African en­voy has called on the US to lead the way out of en­trenched racism. Does Biden have what is re­quired to take up the chal­lenge to make one step to­wards the trans­for­ma­tion of the ex­ist­ing world or­der? A de­ci­sion and ac­tion on the same can mark his gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy: pro­gres­sive or tra­di­tion­al?