President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged global agencies to assist in boosting the local manufacturing and production of Covid-19 vaccines by procuring vaccines and boosters from African manufacturers of the product.
Speaking in his capacity as the African Union Champion for the Covid-19 Response at the Second Global Summit on Covid-19 on Thursday, Ramaphosa said the continent’s largest Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing plant opened in South Africa last year, and mRNA hubs for technology transfer have been opened in Egypt, Senegal, Tunisia, Kenya and Nigeria.
However, this progress might be reversed because international agencies were not buying vaccines from Africa – even those destined for African countries, the South African leader said.
“This must change. Multilateral agencies and philanthropists need to be procuring vaccines and boosters from African manufacturers to ensure the developing capabilities on the continent are retained,” Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa appealed to the international community to ensure that solidarity and equity underpinned the next phase in the world’s management of the pandemic.
“This means that vaccines produced in Africa must be procured for Africa’s people. This is vital for the continent’s health security now and into the future,” he said.
To avoid a return to the catastrophic early days of the pandemic, Ramaphosa said that there was a need to get many more people across the world vaccinated.
“We need to expand access to testing and treatment. The global health recovery will not be inclusive so long as millions of people in developing economies remain unvaccinated,” the president said, noting that Africa was among the low-income countries whose population was least “vaccinated at under 13%,” he said.
NM/jn/APA