African extractors help vaccination efforts

International mining companies in Africa are vaccinating local communities in which their mines operate in an effort to get their operations back on track, companies and industry insiders say. London-listed Gem Diamonds, which has mines in Botswana and Lesotho, has pledged 20,000 vaccines to the government of Lesotho, the company has told African Business. They will “be used for the benefit of the approximately 2,000 mining and contractor workers at the Letšeng mine and also for the local communities and villages,” the company said in an emailed statement. The mine, which is located in the country’s northern region and known for unearthing several diamonds as big as ping-pong balls, is also handing out masks, sanitisers, testing kits and food parcels in surrounding villages. While it is unknown which vaccine will be deployed in the tiny landlocked kingdom, the rollout will be managed by UNICEF according to a tier system. Elsewhere in southern Africa, Russia’s statecontrolled gem giant Alrosa is giving out “dozens of thousands” of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in Angola and Zimbabwe, CEO Sergey Ivanov told Bloomberg news agency in February. Pending production, these would be shipped “in the second half of March”, Ivanov said, without specifying the exact number of doses each nation would receive. Meanwhile, De Beers, the world’s largest diamond company, is involved with efforts in Botswana, the country where 70% of its stones are mined. It has joined with other private sector entities as part of a committee focused on collaborating with the government in support of the procurement and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, a spokesperson for the company told African Business. Gobusamang Keebine, president of Business Botswana, says that talks are ongoing as the government and diamond companies try to agree who will distribute the vaccines once procurement issues have been settled. Botswana is signed up to the World Health Organisation’s vaccine distribution scheme for developing countries, Covax, to which it has so far paid $10m, Keebine says. Covax aims to protect 20% of the country’s 2.3m population, and is due to deliver 100,800 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the country.