IN SHORT: Cape Town-based Biovac has secured €75 million ($88 million) from the European Investment Bank and $20 million from the IFC to build Africa’s first facility capable of manufacturing multiple vaccines from start to finish without importing active pharmaceutical ingredients. The $180 million plant will be complete by 2028 and will produce up to 400 million doses annually, closing 40% of the global cholera vaccine supply gap.
South Africa’s Biovac Institute has won €75 million in quasi-equity financing from the European Investment Bank and a $20 million loan from the IFC to build Africa’s first end-to-end multi-vaccine manufacturing facility in Cape Town, a landmark that will produce oral cholera, polio, meningitis and pneumonia vaccines at scale for Africa and global markets by 2028.
The EIB investment is backed by a European Commission guarantee under the Human Development Accelerator programme, part of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, with the Gates Foundation also providing support.
- Less than 1% of the world’s vaccines are currently made in Africa. The continent relies almost entirely on imported vaccines for its 1.4 billion people, a vulnerability exposed sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic when shipments were diverted to wealthier nations. Biovac’s plant directly addresses this structural risk.
- The facility is designed as the first on the continent to handle the full manufacturing chain: drug substance development, fill and finish, and final packaging, without any step requiring imported active pharmaceutical ingredients from abroad.
- Production will target oral cholera vaccines initially, reaching 30 to 40 million doses annually by ramp-up with capacity for 60 million, meeting an estimated 40% of the global cholera vaccine supply gap. The plant will also produce vaccines for pneumonia, meningitis and polio.
- The project will create 340 skilled jobs and approximately 7,000 indirect jobs in Cape Town, where Biovac has been operating since 2003 as a partly state-owned biopharmaceutical company. It has delivered over 450 million vaccine doses across Southern Africa, including COVID-19 vaccines produced in partnership with Pfizer and BioNTech.
- Procurement channels will include UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, ensuring doses reach the most vulnerable populations at affordable prices rather than being diverted to premium markets.
- Total project cost is approximately $253 million, with Biovac’s CEO Morena Makhoana indicating further financing announcements will be made in due course to bridge the remaining gap above the $95 million secured.
The investment aligns directly with the African Union’s Vision 2040 goal of producing 60% of the continent’s vaccine needs locally, up from below 1% today. For South Africa, it cements Cape Town’s growing role as Africa’s biotech manufacturing hub alongside its existing strengths in wine, automotive and financial services.
The Bigger Picture: The pandemic exposed what every African health minister already knew: a continent that cannot manufacture its own vaccines cannot protect its own people. Biovac’s plant is not a charity project. It is a $253 million commercially structured investment backed by Europe’s development bank, the World Bank’s private sector arm, and the Gates Foundation, because the business case is sound. Africa has 1.4 billion people, the youngest population on earth, and a vaccine market growing faster than anywhere else. Building the manufacturing base on the continent is both a moral imperative and, increasingly, a profitable one.
Source: EIB Press Release / Bloomberg
