The African Union’s public health agency and South African (SA) drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare are in talks on a long\u2011term framework aimed at boosting vaccine production on the \u200ccontinent, after the COVID\u201119 pandemic exposed its overreliance on imports.<\/p>\n
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Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the continent’s largest pharmaceutical company said this Tuesday the talks are focused on building viable markets for vaccines produced in Africa as part of efforts to improve health security and reduce the continent’s \u2060reliance on imports.<\/p>\n
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Governments and health bodies across Africa are stepping up efforts to expand local production following vaccine supply disruptions and shortages during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
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Africa currently imports the vast majority of the vaccines it uses despite consuming more than 1 billion doses a year. The proposed collaboration seeks to address that dependence by exploring a multi\u2011year arrangement to support local manufacturing capacity and supply security.<\/p>\n
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The talks are centred on selecting priority vaccine antigens, gradually scaling up supply with the potential to reach \u200ctens \u2060to hundreds of millions of doses annually, and pricing products in line with market benchmarks, the organisations said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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Getting a clearer picture of Africa’s long\u2011term needs will also help unlock investment in output capacity while supporting more reliable access to vaccines made \u2060on the continent, they said.<\/p>\n
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“These discussions with Aspen represent an important step toward translating Africa’s vaccine manufacturing ambitions into sustainable market realities,” Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya said.<\/p>\n
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Aspen has previously \u2060said it aims to position itself as a leading African vaccine manufacturer. Chief Executive Stephen Saad said the company’s investments in sterile manufacturing capacity in SA and its significant supply chain infrastructure would allow it to produce the necessary vaccines at scale.<\/p>\n
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Africa CDC and Aspen said they will also discuss procurement, financing and risk\u2011sharing.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34329,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-34328","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"AU's public health agency and Aspen Pharmacare are in talks on a long\u2011term framework aimed at boosting vaccine production on the \u200ccontinent","published_date":"2026-05-12 16:27:56","news_description":"AU's public health agency and Aspen Pharmacare are in talks on a long\u2011term framework aimed at boosting vaccine production on the \u200ccontinent","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34330,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34328\/revisions\/34330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}