Team Europe Support Structure on Manufacturing and Access to Vaccines, Medicines, and Health Technologies in Africa (TESS MAV+)

Project

Published on September 5 2023

Project start date: January 1 2023

Status
Ongoing
Project end date: December 31 2025
Financing amount (Euro): 15.5m
Country and region: South Africa, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Tanzania, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Africa
Funders: European Union
Partners: Enabel, GIZ

The TESS MAV+ project aims to set up an enabling environment for equitable access to quality, safe, effective, and affordable health products in Africa thanks to industrial development, research and technology transfer.

Context for focusing on access to health products

Currently, the African continent imports 99% of its vaccines. The risks of relying on vaccine imports were made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw inequitable and delayed distribution of vaccines to the continent.

In this context, the African Union Commission and the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called for the local production of 60% of Africa’s needed vaccines by 2040 and expanded local manufacturing of other health products.

The European Union and Member States are supporting these goals through the Team Europe Support Structure on Manufacturing and Access to Vaccines, Medicines, and Health Technologies in Africa (TESS MAV+) and its related Flagship program.

Approach to increasing access to health products

The TESS MAV+ project is part of a larger coordination between Team Europe and African partners to strengthen their local pharmaceutical systems and manufacturing capacity.

The coordination cuts across three dimensions: Supply, demand and enabling environment.

These three key dimensions are broken down into six workstreams, which include national and regional interventions:

Industrial development, supply chains, and private sector
Market shaping, demand, and trade facilitation
Regulatory strengthening
Technology transfer and intellectual property management
Access to finance
Research and development, higher education, and skills

The TESS MAV+ project plays a specific role to provide:

Operational support to the European Commission to facilitate the overall coordination of Member States as well as monitoring, evaluation, and communication for the MAV+ Flagship
Technical Support to the MAV+ Flagship workstreams (led by Expertise France)
Technical Support to the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing Secretariat
Technical Support to strengthen equitable access to quality health products in Africa

Through strong European and African alignment and partnership on this project, the two continents are working together to meet SDG 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.