Morocco has begun the construction of a new $562 million vaccine plant with the capacity to produce 116 million vaccines in 2024.
The new ‘SENSYO Pharmatech’ factory in the coastal city of Benslimane, is a joint project between Morocco and Swedish company Recipharm.
The plant will be a “fill and finish” site that imports components of vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, and blends them into vials for distribution in Morocco and the rest of the continent.
The project hopes to make Morocco’s vaccine programme “self-sufficient” and make the country a leading biotechnology platform on the African continent. Morocco is already producing more than 3 million doses per month of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.
Elsewhere, South Africa opened a new manufacturing facility on 19th January 2022 in Cape Town to help local company NantSA make COVID-19 vaccines in future. The plant is a partnership between US-based biotechnology firm NantWorks, the South African government and South African universities. NantWorks invested $200 million in building the plant, which aims to produce 1 billion vaccines annually by 2025.
Senegal also unveiled plans to begin constructing a new COVID-19 vaccine plant in Dakar in late 2021 to produce 25 million doses per month by the end of 2022. The African Development Bank said it would provide $3 billion in funding to the project.
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