Today, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) announced a joint financing package of €600 million for Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd., headquartered in South Africa, to expand local vaccine manufacturing capacity. DFC is working together with DEG (Germany), Proparco (France), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to provide financing support. The package will help increase capacity to support Aspen’s efforts to produce COVID-19 vaccines with Stringent Regulatory Authorization (SRA) and/or World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Use Listing, including the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccines will be primarily distributed to the African Union, South African Government, and COVAX.
This effort supports the Administration’s goal to scale vaccine production, invest in African ingenuity and resilience, and help the global community beat this COVID-19 pandemic.