For investors tracking the continent’s emerging vaccine manufacturing value chain, Cape Town is now one of the most important sites to watch.

AfDB capital signals a strategic scale-up

The African Development Bank has finalised a loan of up to US$15 million for the Biologicals and Vaccines Institute of South Africa (Biovac) to back a new multi-vaccine manufacturing facility in Cape Town. The project sits within a broader expansion programme that will lift Biovac’s total annual manufacturing capacity to as many as 500 million doses. Once complete, Biovac is expected to become Africa’s first end-to-end producer of oral cholera vaccine and South Africa’s first local manufacturer of inactivated polio vaccine.

Africa currently imports more than 99% of the vaccines it uses, despite carrying a large share of the global burden of vaccine-preventable diseases. In response, the African Union has set a target to produce 60% of the continent’s vaccines locally by 2040, framing vaccine manufacturing as a strategic industry rather than a narrow public health concern. The AfDB Biovac vaccines transaction therefore aligns tightly with continental policy and with donors’ emerging incentive schemes for local production.

Solomon Quaynor, AfDB Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation, described the investment as a step towards building Africa’s health sovereignty and strengthening regional value chains. He stressed that backing Africa’s first end-to-end oral cholera vaccine facility and the continent’s first local inactivated polio vaccine production is intended to help shift Africa from a consumer of imported doses to a producer of critical health solutions. For Biovac, the deal reinforces its position as South Africa’s primary vaccine supplier and a key node in Africa’s nascent manufacturing ecosystem.

Health sovereignty, jobs and technology transfer

The new facility is expected to be completed by 2028 and will initially produce oral cholera vaccine, followed by inactivated polio (IPV), pneumococcal (PCV) and meningitis (MenX) vaccines. This pipeline targets conditions that heavily affect African children, linking industrial expansion directly to routine immunisation needs. The project is also designed to connect with Africa’s emerging vaccine-financing architecture, including Gavi’s US$1.2 billion African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator, which offers milestone payments after WHO prequalification and per-dose top-ups on UNICEF-tendered vaccines.

Beyond the doses themselves, the expansion carries a significant jobs and skills dimension. The project is projected to create around 340 full-time roles, with an estimated 43% of these positions going to women and 30% to young people. Biovac already employs more than 300 staff, about half of them women, and plans to expand training in vaccine manufacturing, quality control and regulatory science in partnership with local universities and regional training institutions. This places human capital at the centre of the AfDB Biovac vaccines investment thesis.

Biovac will produce inactivated polio vaccine through technology-transfer partnerships with global players including Sanofi, the International Vaccine Institute, Biological E, EuBiologics and Bharat Biotech. These arrangements embed advanced know-how within South Africa’s industrial base and help shorten the learning curve for complex biologics. Morena Makhoana, Biovac’s Chief Executive, framed the project as a chance to shift the narrative from majority-imported vaccines to majority-exported vaccines, arguing that this is what African health sovereignty looks like in practice.

The AfDB loan joins a wider syndicate led by the International Finance Corporation and backed by a long-term quasi-equity facility from the Human Development Accelerator, an EU-supported programme implemented by the European Investment Bank with the Gates Foundation. Grant funding and technical support from global health partners will further underpin technology transfers and portfolio expansion.

For investors, the AfDB Biovac vaccines deal signals growing depth in Africa’s vaccine manufacturing value chain, with blended finance, clear demand-side incentives and strong policy tailwinds now aligned. The next phase to watch will be execution: progress on facility delivery to 2028, WHO prequalification milestones, and how quickly African-made cholera and polio vaccines gain share in UNICEF and Gavi tenders.

The post AfDB Biovac vaccines: $15m Cape Town facility appeared first on FurtherAfrica.