On a once-quiet stretch of coast in Cape Town, a factory is being built that could help rewrite the story of health in Africa. Backed by a $15 million investment, a new multi-vaccine plant run by the Biologicals and Vaccines Institute of Southern Africa (Biovac) aims to produce up to 500 million doses a year — and become the continent's first end-to-end maker of oral cholera vaccine and South Africa's first local producer of inactivated polio vaccine.
Why this matters: Africa currently imports more than 99 per cent of the vaccines it uses, according to the African Development Bank. During COVID-19, that dependence became painfully clear when global supply chains broke and export restrictions left countries scrambling. The African Union now wants to produce 60 per cent of the continent's vaccine needs locally by 2040 — and this Cape Town project is one of the biggest signs that ambition is becoming real.
For decades, vaccine making in Africa has mostly meant filling imported vials and putting labels on them. True manufacturing is far deeper. It requires research, formulation, quality testing, regulatory science, cold-chain logistics and technology transfer. That is why the project also matters for jobs: it is expected to create about 340 full-time positions in technical training, quality control and regulatory science. Biovac is teaming up with international partners — Sanofi, the International Vaccine Institute, Biological E, EuBiologics and Bharat Biotech — to learn the craft and build local skill.
The shake-up is spreading beyond one factory. Gavi's African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), launched in 2024, offers up to $1 billion in incentives for sustainable vaccine production on the continent. By mid-2026, 13 technology-transfer agreements were underway across six African countries, with roughly $3 billion in extra financing mobilised. The first AVMA-supported African-made vaccines could be deployed as early as 2027.
Africa is also strengthening the watchdog systems that a serious drug industry needs. In August 2026, Mozambique became the 10th African country to reach WHO Maturity Level 3 for medicines and imported-vaccine regulation, joining Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
The opportunity stretches beyond keeping people healthy. Vaccine manufacturing can spark pharmaceutical research, specialised jobs, cold-chain networks, packaging, logistics and regional supply chains. Rather than merely being a market for medicines made elsewhere, Africa can increasingly become a producer, innovator and exporter of high-value health technology.
The road is not easy. Manufacturing demands big capital, reliable power, skilled people, steady demand and strong rules. Governments must create procurement systems that give African makers enough orders to scale up competitively. Yet the direction is unmistakable. The next era of African health security will be measured not by how well countries buy vaccines, but by how much of the knowledge, technology and economic value behind those vaccines Africa builds for itself.