Ugur Sahin, AP Images

As pres­sure to share tech­nol­o­gy mounts, BioN­Tech se­lects Rwan­da for lat­est vac­cine site

BioN­Tech’s first mR­NA-based vac­cine site in Africa will call Rwan­da home, and con­struc­tion is set to start in mid-2022, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day at a pub­lic health fo­rum.

The Ger­man com­pa­ny signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing, af­ter a meet­ing be­tween Rwan­da’s Min­is­ter of Health, Daniel Ngami­je, Sene­gal’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Aïs­sa­ta Tall Sall, and se­nior BioN­Tech of­fi­cials. Con­struc­tion plans have been fi­nal­ized, and as­sets have been or­dered. The agree­ment will help bring end-to-end man­u­fac­tur­ing to Africa, and as many as sev­er­al hun­dred mil­lion dos­es of vac­cines per year, though ini­tial pro­duc­tion will be more mod­est.

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