The plan, announced in Paris, is intended to incentivize and offset start-up costs for vaccine manufacturing on the continent.
French President Emmanuel Macron has joined several African leaders to launch a $1.1 billion project planned to speed up vaccine production on the continent after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequalities in access to vaccinations.
An event in Paris on Thursday will see the launch of the Africa Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, which will provide financial incentives to boost local vaccine manufacturing on the continent.
African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat welcomed the initiative, saying it “could serve as a catalyst for promoting Africa's pharmaceutical industry and boosting cooperation among member states.”
Africa is “importing 99% of vaccines at exorbitant costs,” he said.
Macron said the program “will be an important step towards a truly African vaccine market.”
The European Union said it and its member states would contribute $800 million to a vaccine manufacturing program that it says will help offset start-up costs and ensure demand for made-in-Africa vaccines.
“Importantly, this will support the sustained growth of Africa's manufacturing base and contribute to the African Union's goal of producing most of the vaccines needed by African countries on the continent,” the EU said in a statement.
Many African leaders and aid groups say the continent has been unfairly denied access to COVID-19 treatment tools, vaccines and testing equipment – which many wealthy countries have bought in bulk – since the pandemic was declared in 2020.
Wits RHI executive director Helen Rees, from the University of the Witwatersrand, said the COVID-19 pandemic had revealed a lack of equity in access to vaccines.
“By the time the vaccine becomes truly accessible, [in Africa]”Many countries had already experienced COVID-19 outbreaks and many people had immunity from natural infection. The vaccine had a much smaller effect here because it was administered too late,” she told Al Jazeera.
“COVID-19 has opened a conversation about access to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics – all of the things we need to curb the spread and stop vaccine-preventable diseases. And that conversation revolves around equity and how we improve access in the African region.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) and aid groups want to help Africa better prepare for the next pandemic, which many medical experts say is inevitable.
“Delays in getting vaccines to low-income countries and regions are undoubtedly costing lives,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. “We cannot ensure that it won't happen again next time – and there will be a next time.”
Officials say that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, only South Africa had the capacity to produce vaccines on the continent, and Africa produced only a tiny fraction of the world's vaccines.
The WHO failed in an effort to help countries agree on a “pandemic treaty” to improve pandemic preparedness and response before its annual meeting last month.
The project was shelved mainly due to disagreements over sharing information about pathogens that cause epidemics and the high-tech tools being used to fight them.
Negotiators plan to resume treaty talks in the hope of reaching an agreement by the next WHO annual assembly in 2025.
Thursday's event in Paris, attended by leaders of Botswana, Rwanda, Senegal and Ghana, was also aimed at bolstering funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private partnership that delivers badly needed vaccines to developing countries around the world.
Gavi is seeking $9 billion between 2026 and 2030 to boost vaccination programs in poor countries.
GAVI Chief Executive Sania Nishtar said the group aims to move faster and provide more vaccines, including expanding the rollout of malaria vaccines that began in Cameroon this year.
Ahead of the meeting, Nishtar told Reuters on Wednesday that the Global Vaccine Alliance “want to reach as many children as possible with vaccines against as many diseases as possible in the shortest possible time.”
