Access to vaccines remains a significant challenge across Africa, but technology is emerging as a key to breaking decades of relying on other nations for vaccine development- and to thereby stop the spread of disease much, much faster.
In 2021, Africa’s 1.3 billion people had to wait months for the Covid-19 vaccine. More than 40 million doses had reportedly been administered in wealthier countries hoarding the vaccine compared with just 25 doses given, in total, to one of the lowest income countries in Africa.
The world was, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), on the “brink of a catastrophic moral failure”. It was a stark and unpleasant picture painted by lack of access, limited funding, and supply chain complexities. It’s also not the first time Africa has been left behind. The treatment for HIV/Aids took six years to become accessible to Africans who were among the hardest-hit by the disease, vaccines were hard to come by during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and in 2023, there was a shortage of cholera vaccines when an Indian manufacturer stopped making the vaccine during an outbreak.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has stated that over 200 disease outbreaks were reported in 2024. And they all have a direct impact on education, economic development, security and health. Yet, Africa remains reliant on vaccines produced in other parts of the world reportedly producing less than 1% of the world’s vaccinations. Out of the 54 countries in Africa, only eight have the capacity to produce vaccines – South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Today, Mpox is a growing threat in Africa. In 2024, the Africa CDC declared its first Public Health Emergency of Continental Security and WHO issued its Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), one of its highest global health alerts. Across Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa and, more recently in 2025, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mpox cases totaled more than 50,840 as of November 2024.
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The continent’s leadership isn’t sitting still. The African Union and the Africa CDC committed to the ideal of Africa producing 60% of its own vaccines by 2040, signing two Memorandums of Agreement (MOUs) and forming partnerships with key organizations like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, who were instrumental in ensuring Africa received Covid-19 vaccines. But, with the continent expected to now produce 1.5 billion doses a year – 73 times more than what’s produced locally today – technology has become an essential tool to supporting vaccine development and distribution in Africa.
It sounds expensive, but as Arthur Salaün, partner at Boston Consulting Group, tells FORBES AFRICA, “Vaccines are considered one of the most cost-effective global health interventions – for every dollar you invest in vaccines, you get $20 return across economic and societal gains.”
Technology can play into the limited supply of vaccines on the continent. For example, as Michael Mynhardt, CEO and co-founder of MMH & Partners Africa, explains, data can provide rapid insights into where hotspots are forming, giving healthcare providers more time to react. “You can use data to pinpoint and track outbreaks, allowing for teams to develop more effective vaccination strategies.”
He also raises one of the most significant challenges when it comes to managing vaccinations in Africa – the supply chain. There’s a growing need for solutions that can manage the cold chain efficiently while delivering vaccines to remote and hard- to-reach areas. “Drones and autonomous delivery solutions are able to access rural areas quickly and at a lower cost,” he adds.
In Kisumu, a city in Kenya, Zipline drones are being used to deliver rabies post-exposure prophylactics, malaria vaccines and measles vaccines to children. Zipline has also ensured the distribution of more than one million vaccines in Ghana, while the DRC has invested in drones to deliver yellow fever vaccines to out-of-reach locations.
Then there is the role technology is playing in the delivery of the vaccine into the human body itself. As Professor Willem Hanekom, co-national principal investigator for the M72/ AS01E TB vaccine candidate trial in South Africa, explains to FORBES AFRICA: “Most vaccines are delivered by injection – it’s practical and we know how to do it, but what if we developed patches instead? There are trials going on globally to try and convert vaccines into patches but it’s not a simple transition. They have to be safe to use and easy to deliver, and there are a lot of regulatory steps that can take years.”
Patches would be easier to manage, more cost-effective to transport, especially if using UAVs, and less intimidating for children, but their development is lengthy thanks to safety and regulatory challenges. Hanekom takes the conversation back to the supply chain and the critical need to ensure that every vial and vaccine has remained at the right temperature throughout transportation. “Technologies are coming into play that make this more efficient, for example, markers on every vial that can show whether or not there has been an interruption in the cold chain,” he says.
Dr Meg Schaeffer, EdD, MPH, MPA, an infectious disease epidemiologist and National Public Health advisor at SAS Institute in the United States, adds: “Real-time field monitoring tools ensure vaccines retain their efficacy as they move through the delivery process, but another critical factor is more of an interplay on the epidemiology side using a regional model. Technology can help us to consistently monitor where disease outbreaks are occurring and then model and potentially forecast different scenarios to assess which populations will be affected next, and to what extent. It helps us to determine where to position our resources quickly. This is the next critical frontier for Africa – using technology to deploy vaccines exactly to where they need to be so we can stop the spread of disease much, much faster.”
Finally, of course, there’s artificial intelligence (AI). AI is helping organizations reduce the time to discover a vaccine and put it on the market, allowing developers and healthcare systems to react far faster than today. “We see a future for vaccines where instead of 10 years, they will take a few months which means that when you have an epidemic, you can react far quicker than in the past,” he says. “AI-discovered drugs have a success rate of 80%-90% in phase one which is way higher than traditional drugs. The hope is that it will help Africa develop vaccines for local, daily diseases that are of no interest to global pharmaceuticals and change the narrative on the continent.”
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