An MoU that will result in the construction of Africa’s first mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility has been signed.
The facility, made possible through a partnership between the Rwandan government, Senegal’s Institut Pasteur de Dakar and BioNTech, will have a production line with an initial annual capacity of 50 million doses, and it could be used to make vaccines for diseases such as COVID-19, malaria and TB.
The first site will be located in Rwanda and, as reported by Reuters, BioNTech says this will be ‘branched out into a wider production network making several hundred million mRNA vaccine doses per year, with the goal of transferring ownership and know-how to partners on the continent’.
The project aims to help ease Africa’s health inequalities. Construction is set to commence in 2022.
