Africa: Gavi alliance board chair on the future of the continent's vaccine manufacturing capacity

*Pre-and post-election violence as well as humanitarian crises and health advancements are some key issues on the agenda at the African Union 37th ordinary session . The assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union will meet starting on Saturday (Feb. 17) in Addis Ababa.

The EU's former commission president who now chairs the Board of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance was in Ethiopia.

"We should continue to give a priority to the so-called social sector, health and education," Jose Manuel Barroso said.

"The African Union has defined a very clear path, strategy for this and I believe it’s widely shared among the leaders of Africa. They need to give priority to these sectors."

The first mRNA vaccine factory in Rwanda is under construction. 

The project exemplifies Africa's efforts to avoid a repeat of the failures of the Covid-19 vaccines global distribution.

"We have seen that there is still a lot of injustice in terms of distributional resources for vaccination around the world. Ten years from now there will be more capabilities of manufacturing vaccines in Africa than we had before," Barroso estimated.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said last October that if all plans are realized on the continent, capacity to formulate/fill and finish vaccines would more than double the African projected vaccine demand in 2030.

The Africa CDC, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and PATH had released a new briefing paper, “Current and planned vaccine manufacturing in Africa,” following an assessment of vaccine manufacturing capacity in Africa .