By SAMUEL PE­TRE­QUIN | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BRUS­SELS (AP) — The first African coun­tries se­lect­ed to re­ceive the tech­nol­o­gy nec­es­sary to pro­duce mR­NA vac­cines against COVID-19 are Egypt, Kenya, Nige­ria, Sene­gal, South Africa and Tunisia, a sum­mit meet­ing of Eu­ro­pean Union and African Union na­tions heard on Fri­day.

The six coun­tries have been cho­sen to build vac­cine pro­duc­tion fac­to­ries as part of a bid the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion launched last year to repli­cate what are be­lieved to be the most ef­fec­tive li­censed shots against COVID-19.

Africa cur­rent­ly pro­duces just 1% of coro­n­avirus vac­cines. Ac­cord­ing to WHO fig­ures, on­ly 11% of the pop­u­la­tion in Africa is ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, com­pared with the glob­al av­er­age of about 50%.

WHO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus told the Brus­sels sum­mit meet­ing that al­though more than 10 bil­lion dos­es of COVID-19 vac­cines have been ad­min­is­tered glob­al­ly, bil­lions of peo­ple still re­main un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

“The tragedy, of course, is that bil­lions of peo­ple are yet to ben­e­fit from these life-sav­ing tools,” he said, call­ing for an ur­gent in­crease of lo­cal pro­duc­tion of shots in poor coun­tries.

It is the first time WHO has sup­port­ed ef­forts to re­verse-en­gi­neer a com­mer­cial­ly-sold vac­cine, mak­ing an end run around the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try that has large­ly pri­or­i­tized sup­ply­ing rich coun­tries over poor in both sales and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The U.N.-backed ef­fort known as CO­V­AX to dis­trib­ute COVID-19 vac­cines fair­ly to low­er-in­come coun­tries has missed nu­mer­ous tar­gets and on­ly about 10% of peo­ple in poor­er coun­tries have re­ceived at least one dose.

Ear­li­er this year, the Cape Town com­pa­ny at­tempt­ing to repli­cate Mod­er­na Inc.’s COVID-19 shot said it had suc­cess­ful­ly made a can­di­date vac­cine that will soon start lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing. Both Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech, mak­ers of the two au­tho­rized mR­NA COVID-19 vac­cines, have de­clined to share their vac­cine recipe or tech­no­log­i­cal know-how with WHO and its part­ners.

Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders wel­comed the an­nounce­ment but cau­tioned that much more work was need­ed to recre­ate the mR­NA vac­cines and called for Mod­er­na and Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech to help. Kate Stege­man, the med­ical char­i­ty’s ad­vo­ca­cy co­or­di­na­tor, said it would still take con­sid­er­able time for African sci­en­tists to make Mod­er­na’s high­ly tech­ni­cal vac­cine, in­clud­ing cre­at­ing a heat-sta­ble ver­sion and to con­duct large-scale test­ing in peo­ple.

“The fastest way to start vac­cine pro­duc­tion in African coun­tries and oth­er re­gions with lim­it­ed vac­cine pro­duc­tion is still through full and trans­par­ent trans­fer of vac­cine know-how of al­ready-ap­proved mR­NA tech­nolo­gies to able com­pa­nies,” Stege­man said.

He point­ed to re­search show­ing that there are more than 100 man­u­fac­tur­ers in Asia, Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca that could make the vac­cines.

Ear­li­er this week, BioN­Tech said that it would start send­ing ship­ping con­tain­er-sized fac­to­ries to African coun­tries to help them start mak­ing their COVID-19 vac­cine with Eu­ro­pean staff, in what some ac­tivists called a “neo-colo­nial stunt” to main­tain con­trol.

Al­though Mod­er­na pledged not to go af­ter com­pa­nies for in­fring­ing on its coro­n­avirus vac­cine patents, it re­cent­ly filed claims for sev­er­al broad patents in South Africa. The move raised fears the com­pa­ny will be­gin en­forc­ing patents while COVID-19 is still spread­ing in Africa, un­der­min­ing ef­forts to build African vac­cine pro­duc­tion.

In ad­di­tion to sup­port­ing the trans­fer of vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy, the EU has been ex­port­ing mil­lions of COVID-19 vac­cine dos­es to Africa. The 27-na­tion bloc said it has sup­plied Africa with al­most 145 mil­lion dos­es, with a goal of reach­ing at least 450 mil­lion shots by the sum­mer.

South African Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa said Fri­day’s an­nounce­ment “means mu­tu­al re­spect, mu­tu­al recog­ni­tion” of what African na­tions can con­tribute as well as bring­ing in in­vest­ment to the con­ti­nent.

But Ramaphosa re­peat­ed his call for lift­ing patent pro­tec­tions on coro­n­avirus vac­cines that he be­lieves would al­low more man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­duce the shots. The EU re­mains op­posed to the move, favour­ing in­stead in­di­vid­ual deals with com­pa­nies for tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers and know-how.

The de­ci­sion is up to the 164-mem­ber World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion. If just one coun­try votes against a patent pro­tec­tion waiv­er, the pro­pos­al will fail.

Fin­land’s Prime Min­is­ter San­na Marin said talks on patents should con­tin­ue be­cause ex­pand­ing vac­ci­na­tions glob­al­ly is key.

“Oth­er­wise, we will see more vari­ants and the next vari­ant might be even (more) dan­ger­ous than (the ones that) we have seen,” said Marin.

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Raf Casert in Brus­sels con­tributed to this sto­ry