Healthcare workers in Ivory Coast city of Abidjan will be the first to be inoculated as the west African nation kicks off its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Monday.
It is the first national rollout of the UN-backed Covax programme – the global vaccine sharing initiative to help poorer countries control the pandemic.
The programme will distribute an initial half a million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.
Ghana and Nigeria are also due to start their mass inoculations this week.
Covax is the biggest vaccine procurement plan in human history, designed to distribute two billion doses by the end of this year.
But this only covers 20% of the populations of developing countries. Most rich countries have ordered sufficient stocks to treat their entire populations.
