South Africa’s Biovac secures $15 million from AfDB to scale Africa’s vaccine production

Biovac, a South African bio-pharmaceutical company, has secured a $15 million loan from the African Development Bank Group to expand vaccine manufacturing in Cape Town, strengthening Africa’s ability to produce critical vaccines locally.

Biovac vaccine manufacturing expands

The financing will support a new multi-vaccine facility scheduled for completion in 2028. The expansion is expected to lift Biovac’s annual manufacturing capacity to as many as 500 million doses. The facility will initially produce oral cholera vaccines before adding inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and meningitis vaccine (MenX).

Biovac is expected to become Africa’s first end-to-end oral cholera vaccine producer and South Africa’s first local manufacturer of IPV. Technology-transfer partnerships with Sanofi, the International Vaccine Institute, Biological E Limited, EuBiologics and Bharat Biotech will support the expansion.

Africa targets vaccine self-sufficiency

The project is designed to tap Gavi’s African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, a $1.2 billion program that provides milestone payments after WHO prequalification and per-dose top-ups for vaccines supplied through UNICEF tenders.

Africa imports more than 99% of its vaccines despite carrying a large share of the global burden of vaccine-preventable diseases. The African Union aims to raise local vaccine production to 60% by 2040.

“This investment in Biovac is about much more than expanding vaccine production capacity,” said Solomon Quaynor, AfDB’s vice president for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation. He said the project would strengthen Africa’s health sovereignty, regional value chains and industrial capacity.

Morena Makhoana, Biovac’s chief executive officer, said the African Development Bank partnership could help shift the continent from majority-imported vaccines to majority-exported vaccines.

Kennedy Mbekeani, AfDB’s director general for Southern Africa and country manager for South Africa, said the project would allow Biovac to scale production of vaccines protecting children from cholera, polio, pneumonia and meningitis.

Biovac draws development-finance backing

Established in 2003 through a partnership with the South African government, Biovac is based in Cape Town and supplies routine pediatric vaccines. It has delivered more than 450 million doses across Southern Africa, including COVID-19 vaccines. Earlier this year, Biovac secured $89 million to build the continent’s first multi-vaccine manufacturing hub.

The African Development Bank, founded in 1963 and headquartered in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, joins a financing syndicate led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The project also has long-term quasi-equity backing from the Human Development Accelerator (HDX), an EU-backed initiative implemented by the European Investment Bank with the Gates Foundation.