By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The first COVID messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology transfer hub on the African continent, in South Africa has started operations.
The World Health Organisation and the COVID Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative announced in mid-2021 that they were working with a consortium to establish the transfer hub.
The Conversation Africa’s Natasha Joseph spoke with Petro Terblanche, Afrigen’s managing director and a professor at South Africa’s North-West University, about what this work entails – and what it will mean for the continent.
The technology transfer model is designed to create a platform that facilitates localised manufacturing of vaccines and stimulates vaccine innovation through partnerships with universities and science councils.
The pandemic stimulated and gave enormous momentum to establishing this first ever mRNA vaccine hub based in Africa. The use of a hub and spoke model based on technology transfer practices is quite common and well established, but it requires significant partnerships between the owners of technology and the recipients. One successful example is the WHO influenza vaccine technology transfer to about ten developing countries during the 2007 pandemic. The insights from this case study are being applied to the mRNA Hub.
Africa currently has no vaccine technology hub, although there are six vaccine production facilities on the continent. One of these is the Pasteur Institute in Senegal; it’s based on a technology transfer model and produces the yellow fever vaccine.
The decision to set up a South African hub was driven by COVAX. It realised some way into the pandemic that the necessary vaccine supply to Africa just isn’t going to happen, All Africa reports.
That’s partly because of the capacity and prioritisation of established manufacturers; the continent is completely reliant on the expansion of existing manufacturing capacity in China, India, the US and Europe.