 Now, six African countries, including Nigeria, will be the first on the continent to receive the technology needed to produce COVID vaccines. The technology transfer project launched last year by the World Health Organization is aimed at helping low- and middle-income countries manufacture COVID vaccines, according to international standards. MRNA is advanced technology used by companies such as Pfizer, BioNTech, PFE and others for COVID-19 shots. The World Health Organization announced on Friday that six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – would be the first on the continent to receive the technology needed to produce MRNA vaccines. The technology transfer project, which was launched last year in Cape Town, aims to help low- and middle-income countries manufacture MRNA vaccines at scale and according to international standards. MRNA is used by companies including Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna for their COVID-19 shots. WHO Director-General Tedros Adonam-Gebriasis said the COVID pandemic had demonstrated more than any other event. How reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods was both limiting and dangerous. More than 80 percent of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose. Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally vaccine production is concentrated in a few mostly high-income countries. One of the most obvious lessons of the pandemic, therefore, is the urgent need to increase local production of vaccines, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The WHO established its global MRNA technology transfer hub after vaccine hoarding by wealthy countries and by companies that prioritized sales to governments that could pay the highest price. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa urged COVAX and GAVI to buy vaccines from local manufacturing hubs. The lack of a market for vaccines produced in Africa is something that should be concerning to all of us. Organizations such as COVAX and GAVI need to commit to buying vaccines from local manufacturers instead of going outside of those hubs that would have been set up to go and buy vaccines for distribution to the African continent again. Although primarily set up in response to COVID-19, the transfer hub could expand manufacturing capacity to tackle diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria in Africa. Training of the recipient countries will begin next month. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.