China’s richest man and founder of e-commerce company Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, has donated 20,000 coronavirus test kits to each and every African country.
Ma’s generosity also comes with 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suits and shields for each of the 54 countries.
The tech billionaire’s donations come on the back of having given the United States some 500,00 test kits.
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France, Italy and other European countries have also been beneficiaries of the Jack Ma Foundation and the Alibaba Foundation.
In a statement that accompanied the announcement of the kits to African countries, Ma said his donation was to help “take precautions now and get prepared ahead of time.”
The statement also said, “In addition, we will immediately start working with medical institutions in Africa to provide online training material for COVID-19 clinical treatment.”
Ma, who recently toured African countries that included Ghana and Nigeria, is by far one of the world’s richest people who seems to have committed the most resource into the global fight against the coronavirus.
Others such as Bill Gates have also donated kits to the United States government.
Africa still has a lower number of cases when compared to Asia, the Americas and Europe. But the cases of coronavirus infection have been steadily rising over a fortnight.
In all, there are about 300 confirmed cases in Africa with Egypt, South Africa and Algeria sharing the bulk of cases.
The coronavirus pandemic, officially known as COVID-19, began in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Since then, it has spread across the world, with over 7,000 deaths.
