Africa to ramp up vaccine production.

A groundbreaking $45-million vaccine manufacturing initiative has been unveiled in Dakar, Senegal. The Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD) and the Mastercard Foundation jointly rolled out a partnership called MADIBA, which stands for Manufacturing in Africa for Disease Immunisation and Building Autonomy.

The launch of this collaboration early in June marks a significant step towards achieving vaccine manufacturing autonomy in Africa.

The multi-year project includes the establishment and development of a world-class workforce to support vaccine manufacturing.

There will be a Centre of Training Excellence to equip talented young people, particularly young women, with specialised skills in various aspects of vaccine research, manufacturing, production, and distribution.

MADIBA's objective aligns with Senegal Emergent (Emerging Senegal Plan), a government-initiated development model that aims to achieve the ambitious goal of domestically manufacturing 50 percent of the country's pharmaceutical products by 2035.

Through the MADIBA project, IPD will develop a specialised curriculum tailored to train talented young African vaccine scientists, with a goal of ensuring 40 percent of the trainees are females.

Graduates of the MADIBA training program will help drive the success of other manufacturing facilities across the continent. As these skilled professionals enter the workforce, they will bring about a multiplier effect, catalyzing the transformation of vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Africa.

Between 9,000 and 14,000 full-time employees will be needed in vaccine manufacturing and research roles across Africa by 2040.

The Dakar facility will also contribute to the African Union's objective of meeting 60 per cent of the continent's vaccine needs by 2040.

As a possible blueprint for future vaccine manufacturing facilities across Africa, MADIBA represents a crucial first step towards vaccine self-sufficiency in the region, say industry experts.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has linked the lack of vaccine equity to the widening poverty gap, measured by the ratio of how much the mean income of the poor falls below the poverty line.

A UNDP report in March 2022 notes that approximately 2.8 billion people worldwide - mostly in poor countries- were still awaiting their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though over two years had passed since the outbreak of the pandemic and vaccines were in the market.

Data from the Global Dashboard of...