It’s a fact we’ve heard and written too many times: Africa is overly reliant on vaccines from abroad, importing 99% of its supply. That didn’t seem to be a global health priority — until COVID-19 came along and many African countries were left waiting for doses to arrive.
There are now efforts to change that, with the African Union setting an ambitious goal: African manufacturers should develop, produce, and supply more than 60% of the continent’s vaccine needs by 2040 — up from less than 1% currently.
But just how feasible is that? African manufacturers and potential investors are looking at one pharmaceutical company as a test case, namely South African company Aspen Pharmacare, dubbed by one expert as “a titan of the African pharmaceutical production landscape.”