Africa aims to locally produce 60 pct of vaccines it needs by 2040

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | Xinhua | The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has reiterated its ambition of manufacturing 60 percent of the vaccine doses required on the continent by 2040.

The Africa CDC, the specialized public health agency of the African Union, made the reiteration as over 30 partner organizations gathered in Senegal for the first Bio-manufacturing Workforce Development workshop co-hosted by the Africa CDC, the Institut Pasteur de Dakar, and the South African Medical Research Council.

The African continent only produces about 0.1 percent of the global supply of vaccines currently, the Africa CDC said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“In achieving this vision of creating greater vaccine supply resilience for Africa, significant investments need to be made to develop a skilled workforce for deployment in the research, development and manufacturing industry,” it said.

Recent estimates by the Africa CDC show that between 6,000 and 7,000 skilled jobs will need to be created in Africa by 2030 for the range of needs of the vaccine manufacturing industry alone.

The Feb. 7-9 workshop is expected to help fully understand the capacity-building needs and ambitions in Africa, get the full picture of training initiatives available locally, regionally and globally, and identify gaps and opportunities, according to the Africa CDC.

“This very practical workshop will result in concrete roadmaps to achieve objectives in the space of bio-manufacturing workforce development,” it said.

According to the Africa CDC, the high-level gathering will also address how to create a favorable ecosystem for scalable and sustainable financing of training programs in Africa and the best model of partnerships and governance to achieve the continental ambition.