Rwanda:

Rwanda was chosen as the host nation for the African Medicines Agency (AMA) after an important meeting of the African Union held in Lusaka, Zambia.

For this, Rwanda defeated seven other African countries (Uganda, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tanzania, Tunisia and Zimbabwe) in the competition.

This is the latest of recent achievements for Rwanda, which is transforming the country into a hub for medical and health care.

In June, Rwanda began construction of the first mRNA vaccine plant in Africa.

The plant will be owned by German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which produced the famous Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and enabled scalable mRNA vaccine production in Africa.

This comes soon after the EU launched a twinning and cooperation agreement with the Rwanda Food and Drug Authority, which will offer the Rwanda FDA critical laboratory equipment and peer-to-peer support from several EU member state regulatory agencies.

The Government of Rwanda has also recently approved the establishment of the Africa Biomanufacturing Institute in Rwanda, which will help train, re-skill and upskill professionals in the bio-manufacturing industry.

The institute will focus on workforce development and help bridge the skill gap in African biopharma manufacturing with the support of international partners.


This is a huge progress not only for Rwanda but for the whole of Africa.

We saw in 2021 how developed countries hoard global COVID-19 vaccine supplies for their populations, leading to a huge disparity in vaccination rates between Africa and the rest of the world.

In addition, with the worldwide COVID infection rate rising due to the deadly new Omicron BA.5 subvariant, Rwanda's growing bio-manufacturing industry is essential to helping Africa achieve self-sufficiency in drug production.