By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Africa is working with the European Union and other partners to help create regional vaccine manufacturing hubs in South Africa, Senegal and Rwanda, with Nigeria under consideration, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.
“We have now seen that over-centralization of vaccine production capacity is incompatible with equitable access in a crisis situation,” Okonjo-Iweala said on Monday during a virtual meeting.
“Regional production hubs, in tandem with open supply chains, offer a more promising path to preparedness for future health crisis.”
Meanwhile South Africa is set to host a “technology transfer hub” for coronavirus vaccines to scale up production know-how in Africa’s worst-hit nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said Monday.
Ramaphosa said French President Emmanuel Macron and World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus held a media briefing to announce the initiative.
“The briefing was focusing on the establishment of the first messenger RNA technology transfer hub for Covid-19 vaccines, located in South Africa, “the presidency said in a brief statement.
The WHO has previously set up such hubs, which provide know-how and training to local manufacturers, to boost global production of influenza vaccines.
During a visit to South Africa last month, Macron said he was pushing for faster transfer of technology to allow poorer countries to start manufacturing their own Covid-19 jabs.
Ramaphosa told the Qatar Economic Forum on Monday that “52 countries in Africa have started vaccinating, but so far only 40 million doses of vaccine have been administered in Africa — or less than two percent of Africa’s population.”
South Africa, along with India, has been pushing for a temporary waiver of vaccines’ intellectual property rights in order to speed up production.
Ramaphosa has previously condemned what he calls the “vaccine apartheid” created by rich countries hoard shots, and is critical of countries that oppose the patent waiver.
“It is selfish. It is unjust, and it is wholly unfair and we’re going to continue insisting that there should be this waiver because we want to save lives,” Ramaphosa said in reply to a question at the Qatar forum.
South Africa accounts for over 35 percent of Africa’s total recorded Covid-19 cases, and is currently suffering a third wave of mass infections.