According to a 2024 study by the Africa CDC, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, manufacturing vaccines in Africa faces two challenges.

India's journey to become the world's largest vaccine producer might offer insights to Africa in its quest to create a continental pharmaceutical industry.

In 2021at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aspen Pharmacare opened Africa's first COVID-19 vaccine plant in South Africa backed by US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson. It was hailed as a trailblazer and a lifeline for Africa. Less than a year later, in 2022, the effort was abandoned.