At the beginning of December, Nigeria had to dispose of close to one million COVID-19 vaccines that it received, despite the fact that just about 3% of its population is fully vaccinated.

Africa’s most populous country is not alone in having to discard vaccines, with a number of African nations having had to throw away jabs, even though the continent has fully inoculated just 7.5% of its 1.3 billion population.

The issue? Vaccines have been donated to Africa without the consideration of Africans themselves. There have been increasing cases of donations with carelessly short shelf lives, as well as last-minute donations that have left countries with little time to prepare for their vaccine campaigns.

Speaking to the BBC, Nigeria’s Health Minister Osagie Ehanire explained the decision to discard vaccines that were donated as they were nearing their expiry dates.

"That left us very short time, some just weeks, to use them, after deduction of time to transport, clear, distribute, and deliver to users," said Ehanire.

In fact, in July this year the World Health Organization reported that 450,000 donated doses across eight African countries had expired before they could be administered.

Read the full article about throwing away COVID-19 vaccines by Khanyi Mlaba at Global Citizen.