In April this year, the African Union and the Africa Centre for Disease Control launched Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM), which aims to leverage pan-African and global partnerships to scale-up vaccine manufacturing in Africa.

What would it take to achieve and commence production of vaccines on the continent?

Seed Consultancy a Malta-based consulting and advisory firm has published a report building the case for vaccine manufacturing in Africa looking at preconditions necessary to make this happen.

Currently, Africa’s existing vaccine market is estimated at $1.3 billion and is expected to exceed the $2 billion mark by 2030 on the back of population growth, expanded vaccination and new products being developed in response to new viruses.

However, Vaccine development and manufacturing on the continent remains in infancy with the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (AVMI) estimating that the continent currently produce less than 1 per cent  of its vaccine needs.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the demand for vaccines has highlighted the fragility of the African health system, not only from a manufacturing perspective but also in relation to procurement.

The report noted that currently, there is very limited manufacturing capacity of vaccines in Africa with only seven countries having small vaccine production, notably focused on filling and finishing lines.

Only one facility is World Health Organised pre-qualified vaccine manufacturer in Africa and is geared towards small quantities of a vaccine for yellow fever.

"This confirms the fact that vaccine manufacturing in Africa is still nascent, especially in the upstream segments of the value chain. While there is potential to expand the capacities of today’s African manufacturers, much of the sector’s expansion will likely also come from greenfield investments that carefully consider technological and process innovations and structural realities,” the report’s authors said.

There is also a growing support and lobby for Africa to reduce its dependency on vaccine importation with the past year experiencing deepening of the political and regulatory support required to manufacture vaccines in Africa.

Among the specific conditions that have an impact on the ability and capacity of vaccine manufacturing included human resources and education where they noted that few Africa educational institutions in the field of vaccinology, vaccine, or biotech manufacturing making homegrown talent scarce.

This calls for talent attraction and new educational programmes need to be set-up to develop the required pool of highly skilled human resources.

Other conditions that are key include operations and maintenance with vaccine manufacturing and all pharmaceutical manufacturing requiring significant and specialized maintenance of the equipment.  With a lack of an established ecosystem, the cost to bring in foreign teams will be significant until a nascent local sub-sector is established.

The continent should also address concerns such as utilities to ensure that they have the right infrastructure in relation to electricity and water will be critical for manufacturing to set-up.

The report’s authors also noted that having well-functioning regulatory bodies with well-defined regulatory processes and procedures will also serve to support manufacturers not only in the authorization process but also to export the manufactured vaccines.

Going forward, among the key actionable steps identified include developing a continent, regional and sectoral vision and strategy for vaccine manufacturing with robust national regulatory framework that needs to be designed and developed to attract such an industry.

Countries were also called upon to create enabling environments including attractive tax systems and incentives together with supporting infrastructure as well as attracting talent through taxation and residency schemes and developing a pool of qualified local talent through educational programmes.

Countries will also need to think through aspects such as access to international finance and donor programmes together with the development of impact investment frameworks.

With vaccine manufacturing programmes, there will be a need to focus on supporting and reforming vaccine procurement procedures and on standardising requirements to develop complete markets for vaccines.

In the report’s foreword, JP Fabri and Nicky Gouder, the co-founder of Seed Consultancy said that vaccine manufacturing is not just a case of opening a stand-alone factory in several countries across the continent.

"It needs to be seen as a broader ecosystem which has the power of developing into an economic sector providing quality employment, career opportunities, economic value-add and societal benefits,”

"Expanding vaccine manufacturing in Africa is a complex undertaking, requiring several factors to align. Critically, the nascent industry needs wide scale collaboration among a broad range of stakeholders, including pan-African leadership organisations, regional economic governments, national governments, private-sector players, and global-health actors,” they wrote.