Since it emerged in December 2019, COVID–19 has taken lives and damaged health across the world. To date, 117 million people have been infected and 2.6 million have died from the disease. In Africa,611 there have been close to 4 million cases and 106,000 deaths. Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia are the most severely affected African countries. By March 2021, vaccination programmes started in several countries on the continent, but the quantity of vaccines available and the speed of deployment have been uneven.With successive surges of infection, COVID–19 could remain a major risk to health and economies in Africa for some time.