AFRICA CDC Receives Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) Lead Partners to Evaluate Africa’s Vaccine Manufacturing Ecosystem | African Development Bank

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) hosted their lead partners at a meeting on the sidelines of the Africa Health Agenda International Conference 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda.

The meeting, which took place from March 9 to 10, was dedicated to identifying a clear set of annual goals and outcomes for the Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) in 2023. It brought together the PAVM Secretariat and representatives from partner organizations, including the African Union Development Agency, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Development Bank, Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank), Africa Vaccine Manufacturers Initiative (AVMI), and members of academia.

The lead partners reviewed the eight bold programs outlined in the PAVM Action Framework, prioritized a series of practical actions and defined a collaborative framework that enables implementation, effectiveness and rapid results to support African vaccine production.

The Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing was established in 2021 by the African Union, under the Africa CDC, to enable the African vaccine manufacturing industry to develop, produce more than 60 percent of the total vaccine doses needed on the continent by 2040 and deliver, up less than 1 percent. PAVM’s vision is to build production capacity to produce at least 1.5 billion vaccine doses per year by 2040.

“Protecting the health of Africa can only be achieved through our ability to produce the health products we need on the continent. The new public health decree outlines it well in Pillar 2: expanded production of vaccines, diagnostics and therapies to democratize access to life-saving medicines and equipment,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, acting director of Africa CDC.

“PAVM’s ability to achieve its bold goal requires all partners in the space to invest in all aspects of local manufacturing necessary for a greater range of locally manufactured health products. This includes access to finance, market formation and design, technology transfer, talent development,” added Dr. Ogwell to it.

PAVM has developed significant conversational power, technical capabilities and a never-ending mindset to nurture global and regional partners around smart regulatory capacity building solutions, technical partnerships, vaccine pooling mechanisms and access to innovative financing. It strengthens an ecosystem of action-oriented partners to support the achievement of the African Union’s vision of 60% locally produced vaccines by 2040.

Achieving the 2040 vision is possible when access to funding for all vaccine production projects is coordinated and facilitated at all project stages. To support project financeability, co-lead partners of the Access to Finance bold program, AfDB and Afreximbank agreed to partner with PAVM as it brings together existing project preparation facilities across the continent to fund project preparation activities.

The African Development Bank is implementing a flagship program to support local vaccine production in line with its 2030 vision for the development of the African pharmaceutical industry and the AU/ACDC 2040 vision for more local vaccine production. The bank’s interventions will support a strategic pillar aimed at increasing the maturity of the industry by supporting the development of local production capacities, and 4 factors, namely: enabling regional logistics integration, the implementation of industry quality standards support, spur the creation of R&D capacity and pave the way for increased vaccine production.

Afreximbank intends to build on and replicate its successful partnership with the African Union and Africa CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic to support the PAVM platform by providing innovative financing solutions across the vaccine manufacturing value chain. This is done by using early project preparatory support, financial advisory services, project financing and risk bearing instruments.

“Thanks to the AfCFTA Secretariat, a pooled procurement mechanism for vaccine supply will benefit from a friendly trade policy that allows for easy and cheap movement of vaccines and vaccine inputs across borders,” said Themba Khumalo Coordinator, AfCFTA Secretariat.

“Our African local manufacturers are at a competitive disadvantage due to various market forces, including poor and inefficient manufacturing value chains, high drug and vaccine production costs, and poor financing and financing models. Therefore, we need to accelerate our actions to support capacity development of local manufacturers,” said Dr Simon Agwale, a vaccine manufacturing entrepreneur.

He added that research and development capacity needs to be developed because the diseases that plague the African continent are not necessarily the diseases that plague other regions.

“African scientists need empowerment and support to develop their own intellectual property for developing active pharmaceutical ingredients thereby solving the huge gap of an end-to-end manufacturing. An industry based solely on filling and finishing operations will not be strategically or economically sustainable,” Agwale said.

The meeting concluded with a renewed commitment from partners to work together to strengthen collaboration and coordination of efforts for an improved vaccine ecosystem in Africa.