vaccine equity

Joint Communiqué on Vaccine Equity for Africa issued by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, President Macky Sall of Senegal and President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission with Prof. Ugur Sahin, CEO and Co-Founder of BioNTech SE, at a kENUP Conference held in Berlin on August 27, 2021. 

Breaking Ground for Africa's first mRNA Vaccine Factory

Following the invitation of H.E. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, of the Government of Rwanda, and of kENUP Foundation, dignitaries from all around Africa joined BioNTech SE's Founder and CEO Prof. Ugur Sahin on June 23, 2022 at 11:30h in Kigali's Special Economic Zone to celebrate the Groundbreaking for Africa's first mRNA Vaccine factory. 

Among the attending were the host H.E. Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda; H.E. Nana Akufo- Addo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. Irfaan Ali, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, H.E. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, H.E. Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, H.E. Moussa Faki, Chairperson, African Union Commission, Hon. Aïssata Tall Sall, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal, Hon. Jerome Walcott, Senior Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados, Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO, African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, Wamkele Mene, Secretary General, African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, Tidjane Thiam, African Union Special Envoy to Mobilise International Economic Support for Continental Fight against COVID-19, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General, World Health Organization, Makhtar Diop, Managing Director, IFC - International Finance Corporation Finance Cooperation, Dr Donald Kaberuka, Chair, The Global Fund & African Union Special Envoy, Dr Thomas Östros, Vice President, European Investment Bank (EIB) Investment Bank, Dr Trevor Mundel, President Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Prof Dr Senait Fisseha, MD., JD, THE SUSAN THOMPSON BUFFETT FOUNDATION, Dr. Reeta Roy, CEO, Mastercard Foundation, and Prof. Dr. Ugur Sahin, Founder & CEO, BioNTech SE. 

BioNTech SE's Press Release can be downloaded here
Rwanda Television's (RTV) live coverage of the event can be accessed here
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Vaccine Equity for Africa  - First Groundbreaking by BioNTech SE -  June 23, 2022 in Kigali, Republic of Rwanda.

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Technology Transfer and Establishment of Sustainable Vaccine Production in Africa –
A Regulatory Perspective

With the aim to mitigate the dependency of many African countries on a small number of vaccine-producing and exporting countries to procure potentially life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, kENUP Foundation and its partners have started  “Vaccine Equity for Africa”. An integral part of this programme has been the collective drafting of a White Book titled “Technology Transfer and Establishment of Sustainable Vaccine Production in Africa – A Regulatory Perspective”. 

The aim of the White Book is to introduce concepts on how to localize vaccine manufacturing in Africa by applying existing globally acknowledged regulatory standards. The White Book has been a catalyst in the Pan-African effort to launch the first step in introducing mRNA and other vaccine technologies to Africa. Based on the scientific and regulatory principles laid down in the White Book, the time between the conception of the idea to the practical implementation has been shortened to just several months, which could be enormously helpful in the effort to mitigate the effect of the current pandemic. The project will further contribute to improving the capabilities of countries in the Global South to manage potential future epidemics and pandemics, and to establish the regional production of vaccines targeting infectious diseases endemic across Africa. 

The White Book has been written by Biopharma Excellence and kENUP Foundation, with the support of Mastercard Foundation. 

The latest version dated March 22, 2022 of the document can be downloaded here

Vaccine Equity for Africa - BioNTech introduces first modular mRNA manufacturing facility to promote scalable vaccine production in Africa

On February 16, 2022 - on invitation of and moderated by kENUP Foundation - BioNTech SE presented the container solution named “BioNTainer” at a high-level meeting at the company's new manufacturing facility in Marburg / Germany.

Participants included the President of the African Union, H.E. President Macky Sall of Senegal, H.E. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, H.E. President Nana Akufo- Addo of Ghana, H.E. President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, H.E. Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz of Germany, Hon. Svenja Schulze, Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Michel Sidibe, African Union Special Envoy for the African Medicines Agency, Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of the African Union Development Agency NEPAD, Dr Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Makhtar Diop, Managing Director at the The World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation effort.

The manufacturing solution consists of one drug substance and one formulation module, each called a BioNTainer. Each module is built of six ISO sized containers (2.6m x 2.4m x 12m). This allows for mRNA vaccine production in bulk (mRNA manufacturing and formulation), while fill-and-finish will be taken over by local partners. Each BioNTainer is a clean room which BioNTech equips with state-of-the-art manufacturing solutions. Together, two modules require 800 sqm of space and offer an estimated initial capacity of for example up to 50 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine each year. The BioNTainer will be equipped to manufacture a range of mRNA-based vaccines targeted to the needs of the African Union member states, for example the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and BioNTech’s investigational malaria and tuberculosis vaccines, if they are successfully developed, approved or authorized by regulatory authorities.

The capacity can be scaled up by adding further modules and sites to the manufacturing network on the African continent. One of the most critical parts of the manufacturing process is quality control, which includes all necessary tests for each finished vaccine batch. In partnership with local quality control testing labs, BioNTech will help to ensure the identity, composition, strength, purity, absence of product- and process-related impurities, as well as the absence of microbiological contamination of each produced batch.

The establishment of the first mRNA manufacturing facility by BioNTech in the African Union is expected to start in mid-2022. The first BioNTainer is expected to arrive in Africa in the second half of 2022. Manufacturing in the first BioNTainer is planned to commence approximately 12 months after the delivery of the modules to its final location in Africa. 
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Vaccine Equity for Africa - BioNTainer Launch Event held on February 16, 2022 in Marburg / Germany.

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Vaccine Equity for Africa - 
setting up end-to-end manufacturing of contemporary vaccines and other biologicals on the continent

The COVID-19 pandemic made visible the dependency of many countries, especially in the Global South, on a small number of vaccine-producing countries:
  • Globally, only a few countries are responsible for the bulk of COVID-19 vaccine exports. Meanwhile, it is widely recognized that vaccines are distributed unevenly. 
  • High-income countries have sixty-two times the number of vaccine doses per inhabitant available to them compared to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Less than one percent of people in LMICs have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, conferring partial immune protection. 
  • In the international community, the realization is growing that decentralized production is vital. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO stated that “vaccine equity is the challenge of our time, and we are failing”.
In May 2021, WHO recognized the importance of producing locally by adopting the resolution ‘Strengthening local production of medicines and other health technologies to improve access’ calling for local manufacturing of vaccines. In parallel, WHO is initiating several tech transfer hubs on the African continent. 

Following the summit on vaccine manufacturing organized by the African Union (AU), the Africa CDC has launched the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) Task Force with a clear mandate, operating model, and governance structure to enable sustainable African vaccine manufacturing. 

kENUP supports the African Union, Africa CDC and PAVM in this important effort.
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Vaccine Equity for Africa  - kENUP Conference held in Berlin on August 27, 2021. 

kENUP initiates Joint Communiqué: BioNTech evaluates mRNA vaccine manufacturing solutions in Rwanda and Senegal to improve long-term vaccine supply from Africa for Africa

On August 27, 2021, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, President Macky Sall of Senegal, and President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission met Uğur Şahin, CEO and Co-Founder of BioNTech in Berlin at the Barenboim-Said-Akademie to discuss the development of sustainable vaccine production for Africa.

The meeting, which was convened by the kENUP Foundation in cooperation with BioNTech, took place at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. Also in attendance were Dr John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Africa Regional Director, and Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The Joint Communiqué is available for download here.

Institute Pasteur de Dakar's upcoming Yellow Fever Vaccine Manufacturing Site in City of Diamniadio, as seen on July 15, 2021

how we work

kENUP connects its industrial clients from all over the world with Governments and public project developers in Africa, and supports both sides in the development of sustainable value propositions for the manufacturing of vaccines, against COVID-19 and beyond, as well as of humanized monoclonal antibodies, small antibodies and non-invasive differential diagnostics

We support our clients to co-locate their African manufacturing projects with the technology transfer hubs under development by the World Health Organization (WHO), and in alignment with the African manufacturing strategy convened and promoted by the Africa CDC. Those initiatives aim at expanding the capacity of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to manufacture contemporary vaccines end-to-end, and scale-up production to increase global access to these critical tools to bring current and future pandemics under control. In many of our projects, we cooperate with the European Union and the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Regionally, we currently operate in Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, and Rwanda
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