Stakeholders seek increased political will towards local manufacturing of vaccines in Africa

Some stakeholders in the health sector have called on governments across Africa to increase political will and efforts towards the manufacture of vaccines on the continent.

They made the call during the Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa (ECOVA) conference in Abuja.

It was organized by the African Health Economics and Policy Association ( AfHEA) in collaboration with the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention ( Africa CDC), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Veritas University.

The conference was themed: “Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa (ECOVA) conference : Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for future public health emergency preparedness and response”.

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The experts said the findings of the ECOVA project underscored the need for COVID-19 vaccine production, equitable distribution, delivery, and uptake in Africa.

Jane Karonga, an economist with UNECA, said Africa produces only about 1% of vaccines that it consumes, meaning that it imports about 99% of the vaccines.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the weak health systems and poor access COVlD-19 vaccines.

She said, ” So the most important lesson for the African continent is the need to ensure that we can manufacture vaccines on the continent. We have the market. If you talk of the African continental free trade area, which now combines the continent into one single market, that’s 1.4 billion people. You know that is a big enough market for vaccine manufacturing especially with the free movement of goods, service and people.”

She said the barriers to local manufacturing of vaccines on the continent are the fragmentation of market, lack of harmonization of policies, finance and technology research and development, among others.

She said the most important thing for manufacture of vaccines on the continent is political will , adding that, ” because now, with heads of states coming up with a declaration that we need to at least produce 60% of vaccines that we consume on the continent. If we produce besides having a healthy and productive population, then we can also be able to improve the economy and create jobs.”

Grace Njeri, Executive Secretary, African Health Economics and Policy Association ( AfHEA ) said there were several inequities observed with access to COVID-19 vaccines.