President Kagame says Africa manufucturin. File Photo/Village Urugwiro.
President Paul Kagame will be among African leaders who will discuss the Africa vaccine manufacturing conference.
The 2-day Africa’s vaccine manufacturing virtual conference is scheduled on Apil 12-13, 2021 and was organised by the African Union (AU), the Africa Center for Disease Control (Africa CDC).
Among the discussants will be President of DR Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, Cyril Ramaphosa of South African and Macky Sall of Senegal.
They will be joined by other key speakers including Moussa Faki Mahamat, the African Union Commission (AUC) chairperson, Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayat, the CEO of African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD).
Amongst experts and global leaders will be Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, Dr. Ngonzi Okonjo-Iweala- the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Trade Organisation Director Generals respectively, Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS), Dr. Vera Songwe, the Executive Secretary Economic Commission for Africa, Africa’s tycoon Steven Masiyiwa the AU Covid19 special envoy, and Prof. Senait Fisseha, the Director Global programs at Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation.
Africa CDC said on Twitter that a critical lesson that Africa has learned from COVID19 is the need to invest in and build its own capacity and capabilities for the manufacturing of vaccines.
AU initiated its own Covid-19 vaccines distribution agenda -African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) aimed at increasing the continent’s ability to disseminate millions of vaccines to African states which have depended on the UN-led Covax facility to vaccinate the first bacth of the 1.3billion African citizens since March 2021.
