Biovac expansion boosts Africa vaccine production

Africa’s efforts to reduce its dependence on imported vaccines received a major boost after the African Development Bank Group approved a loan of up to $15 million for South Africa’s Biologicals and Vaccines Institute, known as Biovac, to expand vaccine manufacturing in Cape Town.

The investment will finance a new multi vaccine production facility that is expected to increase Biovac’s annual manufacturing capacity to as many as 500 million doses. The project is designed to strengthen the continent’s ability to produce critical vaccines locally and support the African Union’s target of manufacturing 60 per cent of Africa’s vaccines by 2040. At present, more than 99 per cent of vaccines used across the continent are imported despite Africa carrying a significant share of the global burden of vaccine preventable diseases.

Once completed in 2028, the facility is expected to become Africa’s first end to end manufacturer of oral cholera vaccines and South Africa’s first producer of inactivated polio vaccines. It will also be the first facility on the continent to manufacture the inactivated polio vaccine through technology transfer partnerships involving Sanofi, the International Vaccine Institute, Biological E Limited, EuBiologics and Bharat Biotech.

“This investment in Biovac is about much more than expanding vaccine production capacity. It is about building Africa’s health sovereignty, strengthening regional value chains, and creating industrial capabilities that will enable the continent to respond more effectively to future health emergencies,” said Solomon Quaynor, the Bank Group’s vice president for private sector, infrastructure and industrialisation.

The expansion is also expected to generate about 340 full time jobs, with 43 per cent of positions projected to be filled by women and 30 per cent by young people. Biovac, which already employs more than 300 people, half of them women, will broaden training in vaccine manufacturing, quality control and regulatory science through partnerships with universities and regional training institutions.

Biovac chief executive officer Morena Makhoana said the project represents a turning point for the continent’s health sector. “The project will shift the narrative from majority imported vaccines to majority exported vaccines. This is part of changing that reality permanently.”

The African Development Bank joins a financing consortium led by the International Finance Corporation, with additional backing from the Human Development Accelerator programme, the European Investment Bank, the Gates Foundation and other global health partners. Established in 2003 in partnership with the South African government, Biovac has supplied more than 450 million vaccine doses across Southern Africa, including COVID 19 vaccines, and plans to add vaccines for pneumonia and meningitis to its production portfolio.

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