In a move aimed at bolstering the flagging fortunes of African vaccine manufacturers, the AU has called on international organisations to acquire at least 30% of the jabs produced by the continent for global distribution and agreed to establish African procurement mechanisms.
In a statement issued after last week’s virtual meeting of African heads of state and French President Emanuel Macron, the AU said global purchasing facilities such as the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) were hampering the development of African manufacturing capacity by not buying their jabs.
JSE-listed pharmaceutical manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare, which bottles Covid-19 shots for Johnson & Johnson (J&J) said recently that it may have to switch its vaccine production lines to anaesthetics due to lack of orders, and state-backed vaccine manufacturer Biovac says uncertain demand means it may not reach its planned target of bottling 100-million doses of Pfizer’s jab a year.
The AU has been pushing for African countries to develop their own vaccine manufacturing capacity, after the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the dangers of depending on imports. Many African countries were left at the back of the queue as countries with domestic manufacturing capacity prioritised their own populations, and rich countries snapped up supplies with pre-purchase agreements, leaving Gavi and its WHO-backed partner Covax struggling to obtain stocks.
But now that richer countries have inoculated a large proportion of their populations and international production has ramped up, Covax is awash with supplies and Africa’s emerging vaccine producers are struggling to find customers.
The problem is compounded by Africa’s slow vaccine uptake, which has fallen far below expectations.
Only half a billion Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in Africa to date, and just 17.3% of its population is fully immunised, the WHO said last week.
The AU heads of state called on African nations to step up their vaccination efforts, and agreed to a series of recommendations from President Cyril Ramaphosa in his role as AU champion for Covid-19 response, which include setting up African procurement mechanisms to create certainty of demand for African vaccine manufacturers.
Aspen’s head of strategic trade Stavros Nicolaou said the AU call for international agencies to commit to purchasing African supplies and its plans to set up its own procurement mechanisms were encouraging, but needed to be matched with orders. Aspen has so far bottled about 180-million doses of J&J’s vaccine, but has yet to begin making a clone of the jab, which it had hoped to sell to African customers.
African governments should consider wider adoption of measures that had successfully been used to step up vaccine coverage in other countries, such as restricting access to venues, said Nicolaou.
Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana said Gavi was established in the 1990s to smooth demand for childhood vaccines and give manufacturers long-term commitments, and a similarly innovative model was required to support emerging African vaccine manufacturers.
“I can’t understand why we can’t come up with an innovative model that can support African-made products. All those stakeholders holding the purse strings do not lack the intellectual capability to come with a model for Africa, it just requires willingness,” he said.
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