Vaccine deals for Africa

Senegal and Rwanda have signed an agreement with German company BioNTech to build its first start-to-finish factories to make messenger RNA vaccines in Africa. BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, said construction would start in mid2022. It said the facility would eventually produce about 50 million doses of the vaccine per year, with the capacity to increase. Meanwhile, Moderna has said it will make up to 110 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine available to African countries. The continent currently relies on imports for about 99 per cent of its vaccine needs, according to the World Health Organisation. Africa remains the least-vaccinated region of the world against

Covid-19, with just over 5 per cent of its 1.3 billion people fully vaccinated.