NEW YORK: The Mastercard Foundation announced Tuesday a $1.3 billion initiative to galvanize Africa's coronavirus vaccine campaign through a partnership with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

The program will acquire vaccines for at least 50 million people and invest in vaccine production capacity on the continent, a joint press statement from the foundation and the Africa CDC said.

The campaign aims to help the African Union meet its goal of vaccinating at least 60 percent of the continent's population by the end of 2022. So far, less than two percent of Africans have received at least one dose.

The United Nations warned last week that the continent was poorly prepared for a third wave of the virus, owing to the sluggishness of the vaccine rollout and the lack of overall health care infrastructure compared with rich countries. The initiative will help African countries accelerate the rollout of vaccines and "go a long way to begin to enable us and arm us to fight this pandemic," John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, said at a briefing.