Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, further to the Answer of 21 December 2021 to Question 91892 on Africa: Coronavirus, (a) how much funding the UK has allocated to the Africa Vaccine Confidence Campaign to date, (b) what estimate she made of the reach of this campaign to date in terms of (i) number of African countries supported and (ii) number of people reached, and (c) what the timescale is for this project.

The UK recognises that community demand and vaccine confidence are key factors influencing vaccine rollout. Through FCDO's Africa Vaccine Confidence Campaign, the UK is working with Wits University in South Africa and the Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation to develop content which seeks to tackle vaccine hesitancy. The campaign has been used and amplified in the following countries: Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Sudan.

In terms of funding, £7,000 has been spent on producing new high quality video content, for use by HMG Posts across Africa and partners to support traditional and social media activity that builds Covid-19 vaccine confidence. The campaign is ongoing so the total number of people reached cannot yet be quantified, but in November 2021 alone, 60,000 people across Sub-Saharan Africa engaged with (liked, shared or viewed) the campaign on social media. The Africa Vaccine Confidence Campaign is to run until the end of April 2022. The UK is also supporting wider efforts in vaccine delivery on the continent. For example, in South Africa we have contributed £1.8 million to the Covid-19 Solidarity Fund to support the roll out of Covid-19 vaccines and provided technical advice for vaccine deployment.