The Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) announced the creation of a financial instrument that will provide up to $1 billion to support sustainable vaccine production in Africa.
The funding is intended to contribute not only to healthy global vaccine markets, but also to outbreak and pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and sustainability, the organization said.
"A sustainable expansion of Africa’s vaccine manufacturing capacity would have a double payoff for the continent, contributing to the growth of a high-value biotechnology sector on the continent at the same time as supporting pandemic and outbreak prevention and response," the GAVI explained.
The Alliance argued that Africa has suffered the most from COVID-19 vaccine inequities and has the most to gain from sustainable growth in the vaccine industry.
"Africa already accounts for around 20% of the world's population, yet the continent's vaccine industry provides only around 0.2% of global supply," the organization noted.
The new financial mechanism is designed to provide two types of incentive payments to offset some of the initial high costs of production.
The first type of payment, or "interim payment", is triggered when a manufacturer producing one of the vaccines included in GAVI's priority market group of vaccines succeeds in obtaining WHO prequalification.
The second type, called an "accelerator payment," would be paid as a "supplement" per dose on top of the proposed market prices that manufacturers receive if they win GAVI-UNICEF tenders.
GAVI is an international organization founded in 2000 to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children in the world's poorest countries, according to its website.