GENEVA: Six African countries have been chosen to establish their own mRNA vaccine production, the World Health Organization said Friday, with the continent largely shut out of access to COVID-19 jabs.
Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia were selected as the first recipients of technology from the WHO’s global mRNA vaccine hub, in a push to ensure Africa can make its own jabs to fight the COVID-19 and other diseases.
“No other event like the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“The best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage is to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need.”
Tedros has continually called for equitable access to vaccines in order to beat the pandemic, and rails against the way wealthy nations have hogged doses, leaving Africa lagging behind other continents in the global vaccination effort.
A ceremony marking the mRNA tech transfer announcement was to be held Friday in Brussels at the summit between the European Union and the African Union.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said: “We have been talking a lot about producing mRNA vaccines in Africa. But this goes even beyond. This is mRNA technology designed in Africa, led by Africa and owned by Africa.”
Currently only one percent of the vaccines used in Africa are produced on the continent of some 1.3 billion people.
The WHO set up a global mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa last year to support manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries to produce their own vaccines.
The global hub’s role is to ensure that manufacturers in those nations have the know-how to make mRNA vaccines at scale and according to international standards.
As used in the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, mRNA technology provokes an immune response by delivering genetic molecules containing the code for key parts of a pathogen into human cells.
Primarily set up to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the global hub has the potential to expand manufacturing capacity for other vaccines and products, such as insulin to treat diabetes, cancer medicines and, potentially, vaccines for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.
The scheme’s ultimate goal is to spread capacity for national and regional production to all health technologies.
The WHO said it would work with the first six countries chosen to develop a roadmap of training and support so they can start producing vaccines as soon as possible. Training will begin in March.
The South African hub is already producing mRNA vaccines at laboratory scale and is currently scaling up toward commercial scale.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday’s announcement “means mutual respect, mutual recognition of what we can all bring to the party, investment in our economies, infrastructure investment and, in many ways, giving back to the continent.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said supporting African health sovereignty was one of the key goals of starting up local production, “to empower regions and countries to fend for themselves, during crises, and in peace time.”
More than 10.4 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered around the world, with nearly 62 percent of the global population having received at least one shot.
However, just 11.3 percent of Africans had been fully immunized by the start of February.
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Six African countries to get own mRNA jab production
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Six African countries to get own mRNA jab production
- The scheme’s ultimate goal is to spread capacity for national and regional production to all health technologies
World welcomes 2026 with fireworks after year of turmoil
- Australia holds defiant celebrations after its worst mass shooting in nearly 30 years
- Hong Kong holds a subdued event after a deadly fire in tower blocks
PARIS, France: People around the globe toasted the end of 2025 on Wednesday, bidding farewell to one of the hottest years on record, packed with Trump tariffs, a Gaza truce and vain hopes for peace in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used his traditional New Year address to tell his compatriots their military “heroes” would deliver victory in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, while his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky said his country was “10 percent” away from a deal to end the fighting.
Earlier, New Year celebrations took on a somber tone in Sydney as revellers held a minute of silence for victims of the Bondi Beach shooting before nine tons of fireworks lit up the harbor city at the stroke of midnight.
Seeing in the New Year in Moscow, Natalia Spirina, a pensioner from the central city of Ulyanovsk, said that in 2026 she hoped for “our military operation to end as soon as possible, for the guys to come home and for peace and stability to finally be established in Russia.”
Over the border in Vyshgorod, Ukrainian beauty salon manager Daria Lushchyk said the war had made her work “hell” — but that her clients were still coming regardless.
“Nothing can stop our Ukrainian girls from coming in and getting themselves glam,” Lushchyk said.
Back in Sydney, heavily armed police patrolled among hundreds of thousands of people lining the shore barely two weeks after a father and son allegedly opened fire on a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in Australia’s deadliest mass shooting for almost 30 years.
Parties paused for a minute of silence an hour before midnight, with the famed Sydney Harbor Bridge bathed in white light to symbolize peace.
Pacific nations including Kiribati and New Zealand were the first to see in 2026, with Seoul and Tokyo following Sydney in celebrations that will stretch to glitzy New York via Scotland’s Hogmanay festival.
More than two million people are expected to pack Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach for what authorities have called the world’s biggest New Year’s Eve party.
In Hong Kong, a major New Year fireworks display planned for Victoria Harbor was canceled in homage to 161 people killed in a fire in November that engulfed several apartment blocks.
Truce and tariffs
This year has brought a mix of stress and excitement for many, war for others still — and offbeat trends, with Labubu dolls becoming a worldwide craze.
Thieves plundered the Louvre in a daring heist, and K-pop heartthrobs BTS made their long-awaited return.
The world lost pioneering zoologist Jane Goodall, the Vatican chose a new, American, pope and the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk laid bare America’s deep political divisions.
Donald Trump returned as US president in January, launching a tariff blitz that sent global markets into meltdown.
Trump used his Truth Social platform to lash out at his sliding approval ratings ahead of midterm elections to be held in November.
“Isn’t it nice to have a STRONG BORDER, No Inflation, a powerful Military, and great Economy??? Happy New Year!” he wrote.
After two years of war that left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins, US pressure helped land a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October — though both sides have accused each other of flagrant violations.
“We bid farewell to 2025 with deep sorrow and grief,” said Gaza City resident Shireen Al-Kayali. “We lost a lot of people and our possessions. We lived a difficult and harsh life, displaced from one city to another, under bombardment and in terror.”
In contrast, there was optimism despite abiding internal challenges in Syria, where residents of the capital Damascus celebrated a full year since the fall of Bashar Assad.
“There is no fear, the people are happy, all of Syria is one and united, and God willing ... it will be a good year for the people and the wise leadership,” marketing manager Sahar Al-Said, 33, told AFP against a backdrop of ringing bells near Damascus’s Bab Touma neighborhood.
“I hope, God willing, that we will love each other. Loving each other is enough,” said Bashar Al-Qaderi, 28.
Sports, space and AI
In Dubai, thousands of revellers queued for up to nine hours for a spectacular fireworks and laser display at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.
After a build-up featuring jet skis and floating pianos on an adjacent lake, a 10-minute burst of pyrotechnics and LED effects lit up the needle-shaped, 828-meter tall (2,717-feet) tower.
The coming 12 months promise to be full of sports, space and questions over artificial intelligence.
NASA’s Artemis II mission, backed by tech titan Elon Musk, will launch a crewed spacecraft to circle the moon during a 10-day flight, more than 50 years since the last Apollo lunar mission.
After years of unbridled enthusiasm, AI is facing scrutiny and nervous investors are questioning whether the boom might now resemble a market bubble.
Athletes will gather in Italy in February for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
And for a few weeks in June and July, 48 nations will compete in the biggest football World Cup in history in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
