The World Health Organization said on Thursday its COVAX initiative aims to start shipping nearly 90 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa in February.

About 320,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been allocated to four African countries - Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia, the WHO said in a statement.

The roll-out of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is subject to the vaccine being listed for emergency use by WHO.

The organization is currently reviewing the vaccine and the outcome of the review is expected soon.