African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator

Gavi's board approved an extra $189 million for the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator at a meeting that closed on 2 July 2026, on top of the programme's existing $1 billion. Of the new money, $139 million is earmarked to buy vaccines made in Africa, with the first cash reaching a manufacturer in the second half of 2026, a first for the scheme.

AVMA is a supply-side subsidy: it pays manufacturers to build and hold vaccine-production capacity regardless of whether an order materialises, distinct from demand-side models that pay for capacity tied to one named threat. It underwrites Africa CDC's target of manufacturing 60 percent of the continent's vaccines locally by 2040, adopted after COVID-19 exposed near-total import dependence. Gavi had already added $50 million in contingent procurement to the Bundibugyo Ebola response earlier in the outbreak.

Money is only half the bargain. An African plant still needs the technology transfer and sample access that the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex is meant to guarantee; IGWG7 closed in Geneva on 17 July 2026 without agreed text, the fourth deferral, so Gavi's financing and the stalled Geneva talks remain two ends of one unresolved problem heading into IGWG8 in September.