At the Global Forum for Vaccine Sovereignty and Innovation in Paris on Thursday, world leaders, pharmaceutical companies, and health groups announced a $1.2 billion investment to produce vaccines in Africa.
At the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron said the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator would be “an essential step towards a genuine African vaccine market”.
“Africa produces only two per cent of the vaccines it uses and the goal that we have set is that by 2040, that production is increased to sixty per cent,” he said.
The Covid-19 pandemic piercingly exposed the huge inequalities in access to vaccines, especially in Africa which is combating several health crises.
A re-emergence of cholera in several parts of the continent further underscores the need for more local vaccine manufacturers.
“More than four years ago Covid strongly disrupted our health systems and endangered our vaccination programmes that were pushed into the background because of the necessity to fight the pandemic,” Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said while addressing delegates.