Kenya invites bidders for Covid-19 vaccine factory

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NMG

What you need to know:

  • Kenya has invited firms through a global tender to bid for the construction of a Covid-19 vaccine plant as it enters the homestretch on manufacturing the jab locally.
  • The State is seeking to recruit a consultant and a firm to design, build, commission and maintain a fully-fledged vaccine manufacturing facility.
  • The tender has been floated through an advertisement by the Kenya BioVax Institute, a State-owned commercial and manufacturing firm.

Kenya has invited firms through a global tender to bid for the construction of a Covid-19 vaccine plant as it enters the homestretch on manufacturing the jab locally.

The State is seeking to recruit a consultant and a firm to design, build, commission and maintain a fully-fledged vaccine manufacturing facility.

The tender has been floated through an advertisement by the Kenya BioVax Institute, a State-owned commercial and manufacturing firm.

“To achieve this objective, the Government of Kenya desires to recruit a GMP consultant and a firm to design-build-commission-maintain a fully-fledged vaccine manufacturing facility,” a public notice, signed by the director-general Kenya BioVax Institute states.

The floating of the tender comes barely three months after President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that Kenya had started building a filling plant for the Covid-19 vaccines by April ahead of a fully-fledged manufacturing capability by 2024.

“As the first step towards this goal, we have established the Kenya BioVax Limited as a venture that would locally produce anti-Covid-19 vaccines,” said President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“I, therefore, directed the Ministry of Health to operationalise the company,” he said.

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