A new report by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) shows that Africa only manufactures 1 percent of its vaccine demand, with the remaining demand being met through imported vaccines.
According to Dr. John Nkengasong, the Africa CDC Director, the continent manufactures only 12 million doses of vaccine annually. This is against an annual demand of 1.3 billion doses of vaccines that are used in the continent annually as Africa constitutes 25 percent of global vaccine demand.
This emerged during a Virtual Conference on expanding Africa’s vaccine manufacturing.
The conference observed that the continent is lagging behind in its effort towards vaccinating the continent’s population against the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the African Union (AU), Africa is yet to catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination as a majority of African countries have only vaccinated 0 to 1 person per 100 people. This is with the exception of Rwanda, Swaziland, Ghana, Senegal and Zimbabwe who have vaccinated 1 to 3 people.
This is despite the fact that while several COVID-19 vaccine trials were carried out in the continent, none of the vaccines is being manufactured on the continent.
Among the challenges that hinder vaccine manufacturing on the continent is lack of production facilities.
Currently, there are only 8 vaccine manufacturing plants across Africa, according to Africa CDC and include Institut Pasteur Morocco that deals with BCG, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever among others, Institut Pasteur Algeria for Rabies, Institut Pasteur Dakar Senegal for Yellow Fever, Institut Pasteur de Tunis for BCG among others with none located in Kenya.
However, among the challenges Africa faces are access to finance as vaccines and vaccine manufacturing plants are a costly endeavor mostly funded by the private sector.
Secondly, the continent lacks talent and skills on the vaccine manufacturing front as there are few institutions in Africa that teach this field and many who have experienced travel abroad to practice, continent-wide harmonization and regularization and agenda-setting and coordination.
While these barriers continue to hinder access, the AU says the continent cannot afford to wait any longer. This is because of the impact of COVID-19 in Africa, emerging and re-emerging outbreaks and the economic security of the continent and its people.
Further, the lag in access to vaccines means that only South Africa will be able to have full access by mid-2022.
Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco and Gabon are expected to have full access by late 2022 and the rest of the continent is expected to get access from early 2023.
However, Algeria will begin the manufacturing of the anti-COVID-19 Sputnik-V vaccine in September as part of efforts to boost the continent’s vaccination program.
As such, the Africa CDC’s ambition is to increase local manufacturing of vaccines from 1 percent to 60 percent by the year 2040 only importing 40 percent of vaccines compared to 99 percent being imported currently.
The institution also intends to push for 5 regional vaccine manufacturing plants in Northern, Central, Southern, Eastern and Western Africa.
It is also aiming to have 100 percent manufacturing of vaccines for known African pathogens by 2040m, with calls for the member states to build 30 to 60 percent manufacturing capacity for vaccines for a global pandemic and 20 to 60 percent local capacity for routine annual production.
