The Africa CDC and the Mastercard Foundation have entered a new phase of their partnership on the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative in the aftermath of WHO’s declaration of the end of COVID-19 pandemic as a public health emergency of international concern. The Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative, a bold and unprecedented $1.5 billion partnership, was launched in June 2021. This innovative and ground-breaking partnership aimed to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, roll out vaccinations, build the vaccine manufacturing workforce for the continent, and strengthen the Africa CDC to ensure long-term health security for Africa.

Unprecedented in scale, speed and inclusion of African organisations, the partnership has contributed to the continent’s current vaccination rate of 53 per cent of the target population, up from just 3 per cent at the start of the initiative. The partnership has also trained, equipped, and deployed 38,000 health workers, creating a robust frontline in safeguarding public health locally. It has provided job opportunities for 23,000 individuals and integrated over 600 COVID-19 vaccination centres into healthcare systems. Additionally, this initiative led to the expansion of genomic testing capabilities from seven to 40 laboratories across the continent.

The ARCH Cold Chain Solutions Fund has opened the doors to its flagship cold storage facility in Tatu City Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Nairobi, Kenya. The facility consists of a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled facility as well as a fleet of vehicles for the storage and distribution of perishable food products and pharmaceuticals.

The facility is the first of its kind in Africa taking into consideration the flexibility of its services, the product ranges it can accommodate, and the temperature ranges on which it can operate.

The cold storage facility is expected to contribute to the reduction of food waste and enhance safety standards in food distribution in East Africa. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) estimates that around 37% of food produced in Sub-Saharan Africa is lost at various points along the value chain.

The ARCH Cold Chain Solutions Fund received funding from a range of financial institutions, including the European Investment Bank (EIB), which contributed $15 million of the total funding of $81 million raised.

With a focus on smart and low-carbon data centers, the Smart Data Centre Technology Forum has been held in Addis Ababa in collaboration with Huawei Ethiopia and IE Network Solutions.

The event discussed the latest trends, new opportunities, demands, and challenges for the data center industry in the AI computing era and shared cutting-edge technologies and innovative practices for green data centers. It brought together leaders and experts from government agencies, the BFSI industry, as well as international institutions and stakeholders.

Dylan Chen, Executive Director, Huawei Congo Digital Power Business, remarked in his opening speech that as the core foundation of the digital economy and intelligent world, the data center industry is embracing a record boom. To cope with challenges of traditional data centers such as long construction periods, high energy consumption, difficult, and low reliability,

Huawei integrates digital and power electronics technologies to build green, simple, smart, and reliable data center facilities for our customers and eco partners. Robel Getachew, the business development manager of IE Network Solutions, mentioned in his part that Huawei and IE Network Solutions are working together to provide, since 2020, efficient power supply solutions and cooling solutions to help customers and eco-partners build low-carbon and smart data centers.