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South African vaccine maker Biovac has landed up to $15 million in fresh financing from the African Development Bank Group to back its new multi-vaccine manufacturing facility in Cape Town, the latest in a string of deals fueling the company’s push to build Africa’s first end-to-end vaccine production site.
With this new loan offering, the African Development Bank joins a syndicate of development finance institutions backing the project, led by the International Finance Corporation and supported by a long-term quasi-equity facility from the Human Development Accelerator programme, a European Union-backed initiative run by the European Investment Bank in partnership with the Gates Foundation. The package is further complemented by grant funding and support from other global health partners for the technology transfers bringing new vaccines into Biovac’s portfolio.
The financing forms part of a broader expansion programme that will raise Biovac’s total annual manufacturing capacity to as much 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 producer of inactivated polio vaccine, made possible through technology-transfer partnerships with Sanofi, the International Vaccine Institute, Biological E Limited, EuBiologics and Bharat Biotech.
“We welcome the African Development Bank as a partner in this landmark project and are proud that an institution so central to Africa’s development sees in Biovac the same opportunity we see, a chance to fundamentally shift the continent’s relationship with its own health security,” said Morena Makhoana, CEO of Biovac.
He added, “The project will shift the narrative from majority-imported vaccines to majority-exported vaccines. This is part of changing that reality permanently. This is what Africa’s health sovereignty looks like in practice, and we are honoured to be building it.”
Biovac was established in 2003 in partnership with the South African government to rebuild local vaccine manufacturing capability. Based in Cape Town, the vaccine manufacturer has delivered more than 450 million vaccine doses across Southern Africa, including COVID-19 vaccines.
The new facility is expected to be completed by 2028 and will initially produce the oral cholera vaccine, before expanding to polio (IPV), pneumonia (PCV) and meningitis (MenX) vaccines. Beyond production, the manufacturing facility is projected to create around 340 full-time jobs, with an estimated 43% going to women and 30% to youth.
Biovac, which already employs more than 300 staff, half of them women, also plans to expand training in manufacturing, quality control and regulatory science with local universities and regional training institutions.
Solomon Quaynor, Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation at African Development Bank Group, said, “This investment in Biovac is about much more than expanding vaccine production capacity. It is about building Africa’s health sovereignty, strengthening regional value chains, and creating industrial capabilities that will enable the continent to respond more effectively to future health emergencies.”
The loan from AdDB follows two earlier rounds this year. In April, Biovac secured an $88 million quasi-equity investment from the EIB Group and a $20 million senior loan from the IFC to build the same end-to-end facility. On the sidelines of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi in May, it added a further $20 million loan from Proparco, France’s development finance institution. That deal brought the consortium’s total mobilised funding to $128 million, moving Biovac closer to its $180 million target for the expansion.
“By supporting Africa’s first end-to-end oral cholera vaccine manufacturing facility and the continent’s first local production of inactivated polio vaccine, we are helping transform Africa from a consumer of imported vaccines into a producer of critical health solutions,” added Quaynor.
