Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jul 24, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 24, 2025 - Sep 18, 2025
Date Accepted: Oct 31, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Assessing the readiness of local vaccine manufacturing in African countries: A Scoping Review Protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although Africa suffers from the highest burden of infectious diseases, the continent currently produces less than 1% of its vaccine needs. In 2021, the African Union (AU) set a target to locally produce at least 60% of the continent’s vaccine needs by 2040. However, as at the time of developing this scoping review protocol, there is no consolidated, evidence-based framework for assessing national/regional “readiness” to establish or scale vaccine production.
Objective:
This protocol aims to describe a methodological approach that will be used to review existing literature to identify, map and synthesise the existing evidence on all relevant frameworks, indicator sets, and policy documents (global or national) developed pre and post COVID-19 pandemic that addresses readiness for local human-vaccine manufacturing with focus on African countries. This temporal scope aligns to the surge of policy debate on African vaccine self-reliance that emerged alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings will underpin development of a Country Readiness Assessment Index (CRAI). This scoping review will be undertaken and reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extensions for Scoping Reviews guidelines guided by the steps in Arksey-O’Malley and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). We will electronically search scientific databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science) and grey literature such as Google Scholar including grey literature. Only materials published in English, French, or Arabic the principal working languages of Africa’s current and planned vaccine-manufacturing hubs will be eligible, with no limits on publication type. Sources will largely pertain to African settings; date restrictions will be applied. Study selection and data extraction will be performed independently by two researchers. Analysis will be conducted to summarize domains of African vaccine manufacturing readiness. Consistent with JBI guideline no critical appraisal will be performed on the quality of the articles/papers. N/A N/A N/A
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Copyright
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