By Adonis Byemelwa
Nairobi-Africa’s ambitions to produce its own vaccines have received a new seal of approval from the world of investment after global investor International Finance Corporation (IFC) announced it was increasing its financing for South African biotech company Biovac’s flagship “Kilimanjaro” vaccine manufacturing project.
Just before the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, this week, additions to earlier pledges unite development financers commercial insurers and private investors on one of the continent’s best observed benefits in healthcare industrialisation.
Among the new dollars are $20 million from French development finance institution Proparco, as well as an additional $20 million in risk coverage via private credit insurers. In parallel, IFC has doubled its own commitment to the project from US$ 20 million to US$ 40 million.
The package adds to the €75 million of guarantees already provided under the Human Development Accelerator (HDX) programme, which is supported by the European Commission and is delivered by the EIB Group in cooperation with the Gates Foundation.
Combined, the financing represents a significant one-off effort to address an issue that was brutally exposed by COVID-19: Africa is still reliant on vaccine imports and remains highly vulnerable to global supply shocks.
Part of a wider African Union drive to increase local vaccine manufacturing from 0.5% of continental demand before the pandemic, Biovac will establish an end-to-end vaccine manufacturing and distribution platform able to manufacture vaccines at scale on the continent, targeting substantial capacity for the delivery of COVAX-manufactured-dose vaccines.
Also, the deal marks a test case for IFC to see whether private capital can be lured into sectors long viewed as too risky, too capital-intensive or overly reliant on state procurement.
IFC officials said in a statement, “Global health security cannot be reliant on a few suppliers abroad. To build the domestic manufacturing capacity Africa needs, and underpin that with resiliency, will require decades of sustained private investment.”
The economics are substantial. In addition to healthcare resilience, the project will produce over 340 skilled direct jobs and at least 7,000 indirect jobs across pharmaceutical supply chains, as well as logistics and distribution networks.
The financing structure itself may be as crucial as the factory. Instead of a purely concessional financial instrument, the agreement combines development finance with guarantees and commercial risk-pooling to encourage institutional investors into African pharma manufacturing, an area that has long lacked appropriate long-term capital.
What is increasingly central to the World Bank Group’s AIM2030 strategy is to enhance Africa’s ability to manufacture its critical health products in a domestic industrial fashion.
The stakes extend beyond vaccines. With the historical and recent threat from currency volatility, geopolitical fragmentation and supply-chain nationalism, African governments are coming under increasing pressure to reduce dependency on medicine imports.
Biovac’s expansion, hence, is more than a factory project. This is developing into a high-stakes test of whether Africa can create pharmaceutical manufacturing systems that are internationally competitive, and whether global investors are finally prepared to back them.
As a member of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation is the world’s largest development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets.
IFC’s new investments in the private sector in developing countries reached an unprecedented $71.7 billion (fiscal year 2025).
