South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday said Africa needs the skills and capacity to manufacture its own vaccines as the continent remains far behind other global regions in inoculating against Covid-19, reported Yahoo News. He said the supply of the vaccine is too slow to meet the needs of people in the African continent.
According to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), about 13 million doses have been administered so far to the continent’s 1.3 billion people.
“Africa needs to harness its own continental capabilities and identify opportunities for collaboration across… countries,” Ramaphosa said while addressing a conference on vaccine production organized by the Africa CDC.
The South African President said there were lessons to learn from the pandemic. He said African nations must strengthen their ability to both respond to health emergencies in the future and to achieve health security for the people of the continent.
Notably, African nations have struggled to acquire vaccines to fight COVID-19. They import the vast majority of its medicines and medical equipment, leaving it at the mercy of overseas supplies.
Ramaphosa said African countries could seek guidance from countries outside the continent like India and Brazil on how they developed their generic pharmaceutical industries. He said collaboration between the public and private sectors would be essential.
“We will also need capacity-building in the form of skills and knowledge transfer to ensure we can sustain local manufacturing,” the South African president added.
Ramaphosa said the medium-term strategy should be to expand existing manufacturing facilities into regional hubs that could serve Africa’s health needs. He said there is a need to forge sustainable partnerships with entities in both the developed world as well as the developing world.
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame also reiterated President Ramaphosa’s call saying that vaccine equity could not be guaranteed by goodwill alone.
“Africa needs to and should be capable of producing its own vaccines and medical products,” Kagame told attendees.
