From the newsletter
Vaccine manufacturing requires high upfront investment and public-private partnerships offer a way to finance entry into the industry without leaving that burden to private investors alone. ZAMVAX, a new venture between the Zambian government’s development corporation and Jijia, a Chinese medical technology company, is adopting this approach.
The development corporation will own 60% and Jijia 40%. Their proposed $24 million first phase would establish capacity to fill and package up to 20 million cholera vaccine doses annually, using imported bulk vaccine material. Antigen production would follow in a later phase. Biovac is the earliest example of this model. It illustrates how public backing can help establish both a company and its market.
Established in 2003 by the South African government and the private Biovac Consortium, its original agreement provided a market supplying public immunisation programmes. It progressed from packaging to filling and finishing vaccines, secured $128 million for expansion by May 2026, and now manufactures a candidate for Africa’s first end-to-end locally produced cholera vaccine, currently in clinical trials. But two other similar partnerships, in Nigeria and Morocco have not worked well.
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