System 'skews' against African vaccine producers: Africa CDC deputy

South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare expects it might be forced to shut down production of COVID-19 vaccines due to a lack of orders.

This is happening because the system “skews very heavily away from African producers,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, during a press briefing Thursday. Large procurers of vaccines have failed to commit to purchasing doses from African producers such as Aspen, he said.

Key to the success of local vaccine manufacturing is markets — these manufacturers need their vaccines purchased, Ouma said.

“We have a market in Africa. Those who are purchasing for Africa must change the way in which they purchase these vaccines, so that our African producers are first in line to have their products being bought,” he said.

Aspen was the first company on the continent to produce COVID-19 vaccines — the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It remains the only company producing them at scale for the continent.

It was the African Union’s first major deal, signed in March 2021, to secure its own COVID-19 vaccines, as countries across the continent faced major delays in accessing vaccines due to high-income countries hoarding global supplies.

Initial shipments went out from Aspen to African nations mid last year — available for countries to purchase in addition to vaccines received for free from COVAX, the international initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX has provided many African nations with free COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. But the initiative leaned too heavily on doses from the Serum Institute of India. After the Indian government restricted export of COVID-19 vaccines in March 2021, many African nations were left for a large part of last year without doses as the pandemic ravaged their populations.  

But in the last few months of 2021, African nations began to secure greater supplies of vaccines from COVAX and other sources, and the demand for COVID-19 vaccines lessened.  During this time, Aspen also received a licensing deal to package and sell the vaccine across Africa. This makes its Aspenovax the first African COVID-19 vaccine on the market.

Still, only 17% of the population across the continent is fully vaccinated for COVID-19, according to Ouma.  

But despite this need to continue vaccinating populations, Aspen’s Senior Director Stavros Nicolaou told Devex that there had been no orders for Aspenovax.

“We have not received any orders as of yet for Aspenovax from any of the procurement agencies — so this is COVAX, Gavi, [the Vaccine Alliance], etc.,” Nicolaou said, adding that without these orders, the company will need to repurpose the production lines it is using for products that it can sell, such as anesthetics.

“COVAX is largely the facility that is procuring for Africa at this point in time,” he said. "They knew that there was this capacity that was going to come up into Africa. We would have expected some African production would have been scheduled into the procurement cycle.”

Only about 1% of all vaccines that are used on the continent are actually produced on the continent. The AU launched its Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing last year to change that, which aims for African nations to produce 60% of all vaccines used in Africa by 2040.

Since then, a handful of vaccine projects have emerged in countries across the continent. This includes the world’s first messenger RNA vaccine “technology transfer hub” in South Africa.

But there is concern about how sustainable these efforts are without purchase commitments from the vaccine procurement powerhouses.

“This then means that Africa is back to square one. It will not fulfill its ambitions or goals of becoming more self-reliant when it comes to vaccines,” Nicolaou said. “Otherwise, why are we setting this up in the first place?  It's not just Aspen that is setting this up … there are other initiatives that are being planned. And if I were in their shoes, I don't think I would be proceeding unless there is a firm commitment.”

Beyond COVID-19 vaccines, on routine immunization, UNICEF is the “largest single vaccine buyer in the world.”