The establishment of an “mRNA hub” in South Africa to build the capacity of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to develop vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic was widely hailed as a solution to Africa’s lack of manufacturing ability.
But three years after its launch in June 2021, the hub faces uncertainties, risks and shortfalls – including that it may simply become a “technological solution” that maintains the status quo rather than a genuine transfer of knowledge and capacity to LMICs, according to a recent report
Authors Professor Matthew Herder, chair in Applied Public Health at Dalhousie University in Canada and Ximena Benavides from Yale University in the US, base their observations on interviews with 35 key players and numerous documents, some of which were obtained via an access to information request to the Canadian government.
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