During the Covid pandemic, the US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson produced their Covid vaccine in South Africa. This was then exported to Europe, leaving the local population with no production for themselves.
In the wake of the pandemic, Gavi, which aims to improve the supply of vaccines to poorer countries, is pushing for better access to vaccines to become a priority for the international community, an approach that is widely supported by the G7 and G20 countries.
“Today, Africa imports 99% of the vaccines that are needed on the continent,” David Kinder, Gavi’s director of development financing, tells SWI swissinfo.ch. This includes vaccines against malaria and cholera, which kill hundreds of thousands of children every year. The Gavi vaccine alliance includes UN organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the World Bank, as well as developing and donor countries, the vaccine industry, research institutions, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and NGOs.
Their solution to avoid another hoarding of vaccines by rich countries, as was the case during the Covid-19 pandemic, is decentralising vaccine production and promoting production in the countries that need them most: those on the African continent.
Historic change
To achieve this, Gavi launched a new financing instrument: the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA). This will help the African Union, which comprises 55 countries in the continent, produce 60% of the vaccines they need by 2040. The official launch of the AVMA is planned for June 20 in Paris.
The AVMA is a fund endowed with $1 billion (CHF900 million) over ten years. The money comes from outstanding funds in the Covax initiative. This multilateral collaboration, launched in 2020 to provide poorer countries with vaccines against the Sars-Cov-2 virus, was terminated in December 2023.
“Gavi’s goal with the AVMA is to create a market to lower vaccine prices,” Kinder explains.
The AVMA intends to help African manufacturers remain competitive against well-established players such as Johnson & Johnson or Roche, which are able to drive down their prices due to economies of scale.
This is a historic change from previous efforts in which Gavi focused its budget on mostly buying vaccines from the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers. For a long time, this approach was considered cost-effective. However, it also increased the concentration of vaccine production among a few manufacturers and left little room for new suppliers.
As one of the largest purchasers of vaccines worldwide, Gavi is sending a strong signal to the global markets that it supports African vaccine production, Kinder says. This will help manufacturers plan production based on expected demand.