India, still a developing country, has achieved tremendous success as the world’s largest vaccine producer. This accomplishment leads to many lessons that India can offer to other low- to middle-income economies across the globe, such as Africa, looking to ramp up their vaccine industry. The African continent should capitalize on this opportunity and seek guidance from India, considering that India’s pharma and vaccine sectors are four to five decades ahead of the African continent.
India made vaccine manufacturing cheaper through policy and scale
From investing in education and R&D to making necessary policy changes conducive to the growth of a sustainable and resilient vaccine sector, the Indian government has always been at the forefront of reducing overall pharmaceutical costs and nurturing the pharma industry.
Policy support helped India cut vaccine manufacturing costs
The Indian government’s concrete action in strategy and policy-making has empowered the pharma industry to grow in a conducive environment. These conditions enabled the sector to become cost-effective by producing low-cost generic medicines and vaccines at high volumes.
This is evident from the fact that Invest India, the country’s investment promotion agency, states that producing pharmaceuticals in India is 33% cheaper than in Western markets due to labor costs being 50-55% lower. The cost of conducting clinical trials in India is also much lower, approximately 40%-80% cheaper when compared to Western markets, according to a 2010 article by the International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Indian pharma firms sometimes reverse-engineer medicines produced by companies making branded drugs and sell the formulation at a much-reduced price. The unique selling proposition of the Indian pharma industry has always been high volume and low costs to make its products more affordable and accessible to patients across low- to middle-income strata of society.
Scientific training helped India reduce API import dependence
Backed by the central government’s prioritization of domestic vaccine and drug production, some pharma companies in India started manufacturing raw materials or key starting materials to minimize the dependency on API imports.
Other initiatives to strengthen the foothold of the Indian vaccine sector were directed towards building a solid talent pool of professionals who could develop drugs and vaccines independently, rather than copy the processes from branded medicines. A result of this approach was the Lucknow-based Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), which was founded in 1951 and continues to be one of the leading scientific institutes in India.
With the creation of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in 1986, India took another massive step towards progressing its pharma industry. Since then, DBT has been at the forefront of providing financial and logistical support for vaccine development and production using new and advanced technologies. The organization is also involved in creating biotech training programs for universities and institutes across India.
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Africa can borrow India’s vaccine lessons, but not copy them fully
It would be too ambitious to anticipate Africa replicating the Indian vaccine sector’s strategies and mechanisms in every way and detail. Although the two regions share enough similarities regarding disease profiles, geographies, climates, economies, etc., differences in competition, technology, and market dynamics cannot be ignored.
These differences could benefit and challenge the vaccine sector in Africa. The region must prioritize the creation of a resilient, sustainable, and robust life sciences ecosystem that will support the pharma, medical technologies, and vaccine sectors in the long run.
A wider life sciences base can support African vaccine production
Africa needs to form close ties with multiple supporting networks, similar to how the Indian vaccine producers networked with the local biosciences ecosystem. These supporting networks must be associated with the production of multiple pharmaceutical products for a region, building a strong scientific labor force alongside reinforcing its regulatory system.
Public vaccine plants need room to make production decisions
One of the key learnings from the pitfalls of India’s vaccine sector is that the executive/leadership teams of government-owned vaccine facilities should receive a higher level of autonomy. Government agencies should not interfere to the maximum extent possible. A classic example from the Indian market is the 2020-2021 downfall of HLL Biotech, which could not produce any COVID-19 vaccine owing to government interference in the technology upgrade and production-related decisions.
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Africa’s Vaccine Import Gap Gives Indian Producers a Clear Role
Africa’s Vaccine Push: Local Shots Need More Than Imported Cash
EOS Implic-Action: Africa’s vaccine goals need skills before scale
For the African vaccine development and production industry to embark on a path of growth, it is imperative to learn from the valuable lessons available. However, with limited financial resources and insufficient infrastructure, it is crucial to prioritize the actions taken to ensure maximum progress.
To start building a favorable environment, it might be beneficial for the African markets to develop policies emphasizing process patents more than product patents, at least in the initial few years. This could be akin to regulations in the Indian pharma sector of 1970-1995, which proved quite effective and could fuel the growth of the generics market in Africa. Creating such an environment would waive off patent protection of branded drug manufacturers initially so that the local pharma companies can produce medicines at a low cost without paying royalties for copying the drug formulations of the branded drugs. Therefore, Africa can focus on building their generics market first and utilize the profits from there to reinforce the vaccine industry.
Secondly, African governments should initiate expanding the number of technology transfer hubs across the continent that focus not only on mRNA-based vaccines but also on newer DNA-based vaccines that are more suited for the African climate. Partnerships and collaborations with research institutes that are already working towards this goal can be a good first step.
One crucial step, which should not be delayed, is building a robust, skilled workforce to drive the sector development. Unfortunately, most African countries’ current education curricula are not in sync with the continent’s needs for vaccine manufacturing. Therefore, Africa urgently needs investment in education from various sources to develop the backbone of the vaccine industry so that the new education system can produce employable graduates in this field. It is important to note that the African governments should take a significant portion of this responsibility.
To begin with, new graduates can be something other than tertiary-educated, highly specialized professionals, such as PhDs. Rather than that, some form of vocational training in vaccine manufacturing or bachelor’s programs in relevant subjects, such as pharmacy, chemistry, etc., would help produce sufficiently skilled labor. This manpower can work and train further on the job under the guidance and supervision of foreign high-level talent and local high-level scientists who are present on the continent relatively sparsely.
These vocational programs should be a collaborative effort between educational institutions and the existing and new vaccine manufacturing facilities in Africa. This would increase the chances of the African manufacturing facilities absorbing the graduating trainees.
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India’s education evolution demonstrates the significance of having domestic talent to augment and strengthen its own pharma and vaccine sector. This can empower Africa to curb the costs associated with foreign talent hunting and be more resilient to situations such as staff shortages, foreign staff availability fluctuations, etc.
Moreover, it is the responsibility of African governments to support the creation of jobs in vaccine manufacturing and R&D to attract the newly-trained workforce. A proven approach to this is to offer incentives for employing local talent to foreign and domestic investors who intend to set up vaccine facilities in the region. The incentives could range from tax rebates, exemptions, or credits, to offering employee training grants, subsidies for insurance coverage, etc. If this can encourage the creation of jobs in these sectors, young Africans will likely be keen on enrolling in related vocational programs.
Looking at the long-term objectives for the continent’s vaccine industry path, Africa’s primary aim should be to meet its own domestic vaccine needs in terms of both volume and disease spectrum.
Africa can learn critical lessons from India’s strengths and weaknesses in the vaccine sector. The weight of kick-starting the industry development inevitably lies on the African governments’ shoulders, and the sector will not develop on its own. It is high time for stakeholders, such as state governments, regulatory bodies, institutes, pan-African organizations, and local pharma companies, to speed up the process of absorbing and implementing these lessons. It is the only way to achieve the goal of 60% domestic vaccine production by 2040.