New deals announced to catalyse vaccine manufacturing in Africa

The African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), launched in June 2024 to catalyse investment in Africa’s vaccine manufacturing ecosystem, has already begun building confidence for groundbreaking partnerships, with two new collaborations signed last week in a positive step towards enhanced health security.

The collaborations were signed on the sidelines of the 2nd Vaccine and Other Health Products Manufacturing Forum in Cairo – co-hosted by Gavi, African Union (AU), Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), and the Arab Republic of Egypt.

“These new partnerships are a testament to AVMA’s ability to foster strategic partnerships across geographies that address unmet public health needs while contributing to Africa’s health security. Gavi is committed to playing our part in the broader effort to build an ecosystem that enables sustainable, end-to-end manufacturing capacity on the African continent, and healthier vaccine markets world-wide. Together, we can lay the groundwork for a safer, healthier future for all,” said David Kinder, the Director, Development Finance at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

EVA Pharma (Egypt) announced a groundbreaking collaboration with DNA Script (France), Quantoom Biosciences (Belgium), and Unizima (Belgium) to establish the first digital-to-biologics end-to-end mRNA development and production platform in Africa.

The focus of this collaboration is to enable rapid response to infectious disease outbreaks, support routine immunizations, and provide affordable vaccines. With a vision to produce up to 100 million doses of RNA-based vaccines annually, the partnership aims to foster local production and strengthen regional autonomy in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

On the other hand, the Biogeneric Pharma (Egypt) and Afrigen (South Africa) signed an addendum to their MoU focused on strengthening their partnership in developing mRNA platform technology.

This collaboration between the North and South of the continent exemplifies how African manufacturers can work together toward a shared vision of health security and self-reliance.

By focusing on novel disease targets relevant to the region, this partnership highlights what can be achieved when African innovation and expertise come together for a common goal.

Designed by Gavi over two years in collaboration with the AU, Africa CDC and other critical stakeholders, AVMA was officially launched in June 2024 and attracted pledges of US$ 1.2 billion in financing from 12 sovereign and philanthropic donors.

Over the course of ten years, AVMA will make financing available in the form of downstream incentives.

The instrument offers higher payments for priority vaccines (such as cholera vaccines) and vaccine technology platforms (such as mRNA) – leveraging Gavi and partners’ insight into areas of unmet public health and market need. Payments also require that the license is held by an African manufacturer.

AVMA was thus designed to send a strong market signal and incentivize upstream investments in areas that advance critical public health goals and contribute to healthy global vaccine markets, build meaningful capacity on the African continent, and support pandemic preparedness.

At present, while demand for vaccines in Africa is valued at over US$ 1 billion annually – with this figure projected to grow along with the continent’s population – Africa’s vaccine industry provides only around 0.1% of global supply.

The African Union has set a target for the continent to produce 60% of the vaccines it needs by 2040. Reaching this goal will require long-term commitment from a range of stakeholders across the ecosystem – with investments needed in regulatory capacity, human resources, and infrastructure, among other areas.

Designed to contribute to this ecosystem, AVMA leverages Gavi’s role as one of the world’s largest purchaser of vaccines and more than two decades of the Alliance’s expertise in shaping vaccine markets.

With more than a billion children already protected through Gavi programmes, Gavi helps vaccinate nearly half the world’s children against a range of infectious diseases and forms an essential pillar of global health security.

In addition to preventing outbreaks and investing in health systems that are ready, responsive and resilient, Gavi also helps the world respond to infectious disease threats such as cholera, Ebola, COVID-19 and mpox.

The Alliance is currently seeking to raise at least US$ 9 billion to protect more people, against more diseases, faster than ever before during its next strategic period from 2026 to 2030.

The official Forum communique also saw African governments advocating that the full replenishment of Gavi funding for this period as being of vital importance to increase immunisation coverage and build sustainable manufacturing capacity on the African continent.