Regional Conference on Vaccine Manufacturing in Africa
2023-06-13 08:00 - 2023-06-14 17:00 (Africa/Kampala)
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How CSOs can do advocacy to ramp vaccine manufacturing in Africa –
Pharmaceuticals legal and institutional reforms
Vaccine manufacturing Rwanda and Uganda –
The state of vaccine manufacturing-Africa CDC
Pharma Manufacturing Assoc.

Background:
For more than a century, vaccine Research and Development (R&D) and manufacturing have been concentrated in Europe, India and the United States. Until recently, there were only 10 vaccine manufacturers across five African countries –Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia jointly producing a tiny fraction of the continent’s needs. Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity does not match the severity of its vaccine-preventable disease burden. With the inability to produce its own, Africa has ended up at the back of the queue for lifesaving vaccines like the coronavirus jabs where less than 12% of the African population is fully vaccinated compared with about 71% of the population in Europe.
This underdevelopment may be attributed to various factors including; a) the unfavourable and inadequate policies and regulatory frameworks at national, regional, continental and global levels that do not holistically support vaccine manufacturing; b) limited efforts by African states to pool resources especially technical skills and financial resources which persistently weakens the development of health sector innovations, research, development and industrialization on the continent; and c) limited financing that further restricts the capacity of the National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) to enact appropriate frameworks to regulate and support vaccine manufacturing. These inevitably stifle African-based initiatives in vaccine manufacturing.
Key stakeholders, especially the Civil Society movements in Africa, and academia play a significant role in advancing manufacturing initiatives on the continent; however, they significantly lack the capacity to proactively engage policy makers to demand support towards vaccine development initiatives that would foster sustainable vaccine manufacturing in Africa.
It is upon this background that Afya na Haki (Ahaki) under the Africentric Advocacy and Research Approaches to Advancing Regional Vaccine Manufacturing and Access in Africa (ARMA-PROGRAMME) will convene a Regional Conference on Vaccine Manufacturing in Africa to draw on Africentric evidence, experiences and expertise to advance vaccine manufacturing in Africa.
Objectives
The objectives of the regional conference are;

To discuss the state of vaccine manufacturing in Africa and Africa’s preparedness for the future pandemics
To understand the role of civil society and other key players in advancing vaccine manufacturing in Africa.
To benchmark on the experiences and best practices from the various research and regional advocacy initiatives that will inform the regional advocacy and policy agenda on vaccine manufacturing in Africa.

Expected outcomes;

Increased policy debate on sustainable vaccine manufacturing in Africa for regional and global health security.
Unified regional and global voices towards addressing the existing gaps in ensuring that Africa is prepared for the future pandemics.

Participants:
The regional conference will bring together key players from Eastern, Western and Southern Africa including the African Union, academic, civil society, policy makers from relevant government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), pharmaceutical manufacturers associations, development partners, media and among others.
