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Good practice Imported

WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme — Afrigen's Cape Town Hub-and-Spoke Vaccine Network

South Africa · Cape Town · See the South Africa profile · See the Cape Town profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 19% 81/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2021, WHO and the Medicines Patent Pool have backed Afrigen Biologics in Cape Town to reverse-engineer and transfer mRNA vaccine know-how to 15 partner organisations, though as of 2025 its own COVID candidate remained in pre-clinical scale-up.

15
Partner biomanufacturing organisations receiving technology transfer (as of April 2023)
117 US$ million
Donor funding contributed to the programme (as of April 2023)
200+
Participants at the April 2023 Cape Town programme meeting (April 2023)
WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme — Afrigen's Cape Town Hub-and-Spoke Vaccine Network

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines / WHO / Medicines Patent Pool
Period
2021–present
Keywords
biotechnology, vaccine manufacturing, public health, technology transfer

Context

Launched in June 2021 in response to COVID-19 vaccine inequity, the WHO/Medicines Patent Pool mRNA Technology Transfer Programme designated Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South Africa, as its hub.

Objectives

Afrigen used the publicly available sequence of an existing mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to independently reproduce a candidate, AfriVac 2121 — reported as the first mRNA vaccine designed and produced at laboratory scale on the African continent without the original developer's involvement.

Activities

At an April 2023 meeting in Cape Town attended by over 200 participants, the programme confirmed technology transfer to 15 partner biomanufacturing organisations across low- and middle-income countries, with donors including France, Germany, Canada, Norway, the European Commission and the African Union contributing a reported US$117 million by that point.

Results

By June 2025, Biovac — a Cape Town-based manufacturer and the programme's first technology-transfer recipient — publicly confirmed it had independently reproduced and scaled up Afrigen's process, which the programme presented as validation that the transferred technology works outside its originating lab.

Conclusions

Independent, peer-reviewed analysis has been more circumspect: a 2024 case study in PLOS Global Public Health ('Our project, your problem?') found that WHO and the Medicines Patent Pool retained tight control over the programme's design, with weak contractual guarantees on affordability or recipients' freedom to license technology onward — and as of the programme's 2025 update, Afrigen's own COVID-19 candidate remained in scale-up rather than in clinical trials or market use.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines as the designated hub, reverse-engineering and scaling the mRNA vaccine candidate, WHO and the Medicines Patent Pool coordinating programme design and partner selection, 15 partner biomanufacturing organisations across low- and middle-income countries receiving the transferred technology, Biovac, the first technology-transfer recipient, independently reproducing and scaling the process

Conditions for success

  • Access to a publicly available vaccine sequence enabling reverse engineering without the original developer's cooperation
  • Multi-donor government funding (France, Germany, Canada, Norway, EU, African Union) sustaining the hub-and-spoke network
  • Independent replication by a recipient organisation (Biovac) as real-world validation that transferred know-how works outside the originating lab

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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