Allocating 1% of GDP to intellectual property development & innovation in healthcare manufacturing could improve medicine supply & security in SA

The African continent and the people who live in South Africa, deserve access to improved vaccine-supply and medicine security. Sadly, this won’t be possible if we don’t strengthen our local healthcare system, in a pan-African effort to spearhead the development of a new public health order for Africa over the next 5-15 years. This initiative is currently being led, in part, by the Africa CDC and the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing Framework for Action (PAVM). With South Africa’s continued support, the PAVM could meet its ambitious goal of ensuring that 60% of Africa’s vaccine demand is supplied by Africa’s own vaccine-manufacturing industry by 2040. The Afrigen mRNA vaccine technology hub in Cape Town already offers a pathway towards making this possible in South Africa. If we can continue to develop the technology we require to manufacture biologics and mRNA based products locally, we can slowly begin to build a pharmaceutical manufacturing framework that is capable of improving medicine security across Africa in the long term.