La Pointe Sarène, Senegal 07/02/2022; Over 30 partner organisations will join from 7th to 9th February to participate in the first Biomanufacturing Workforce Development workshop co-hosted by Africa CDC, IPD and SAMRC.
The Africa CDC has set the ambitious goal to manufacture 60% of the vaccine doses required on the continent by 2040. Yet, Africa currently only produces about 0.1% of the global supply of vaccines. In achieving this vision of creating greater vaccine supply resilience for Africa, significant investments need to be made to develop a skilled workforce for deployment in the research, development and manufacturing industry. Recent estimates by the Africa CDC reveal that between 6000 and 7000 skilled jobs will need to be created in Africa by 2030 for the range of needs of the vaccine manufacturing industry alone.
In this context, the Africa CDC, IPD and SAMRC are joining forces to fully understand the capacity building needs and ambitions in Africa, to get the full picture of training initiatives available locally, regionally and globally, and identify gaps and opportunities.
This very practical workshop will result in concrete roadmaps to achieve objectives in the space of biomanufacturing workforce development, it will also address how to create a favourable ecosystem for scalable and sustainable financing of training programmes in Africa and the best model of partnerships and governance to achieve the continental ambition.
This event also launches the IPD biomanufacturing human capital development initiative Knowledge & Workforce for Africa Manufacturing’s Equity (KWAME), which is intrinsically linked to the MADIBA project to manufacture and supply high-quality, affordable and relevant vaccines for Africa in Senegal.
