President Paul Kagame was on Tuesday hosted by Uğur Şahin, the Chief Executive of the German Biotechnology firm, BioNTech, at the headquarters in Mainz, Germany. Kagame said he also had an opportunity to tour the facility, alongside Şahin and his wife Ozlem Tureci, the firm’s founding couple. “I had the great opportunity to visit with Uğur Şahin at BioNTech Group facility in Mainz, Germany.” “Impressive innovations in biotech HighLevelStuff. A very good person and couple he and Dr. Özlem Türeci are!” Kagame added in a tweet. According to Presidency, Kagame held a meeting with Şahin, where the two discussed the upcoming groundbreaking for the BioNTainer modular system in Rwanda. “…that will manufacture Covid-19 vaccines as well as malaria and TB vaccines currently under development,” Presidency said in a tweet. Last month, BioNTech introduced its approach to setting up scalable vaccine production by developing and delivering mRNA manufacturing facilities based on a container solution. The first container is expected to arrive in Africa in the second half of 2022 with BioNTech expected to ship to Rwanda, Senegal, and potentially South Africa in close coordination with the respective country and the African Union. The development, world leaders said at the launch, is an attempt to help address vaccine inequities that continue to plague the continent. BioNTech’s BioNTainers have a total footprint of 800 square meters consisting of two modules. Each module contains six standard-sized containers, which measure 2.6 m x 2.4 m x 12 m. Each BioNTainer is a cleanroom equipped with state-of-the-art manufacturing solutions. The modular factories have an initial capacity of up to approximately 50 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine each year. “BioNTech’s innovative modular production system opens up a new horizon for global vaccine equity. Rwanda looks forward to initiating mRNA vaccine manufacturing in the near future, in collaboration with BioNTech and our partners in Africa, Europe, and beyond,” President Kagame said at the launch on February, 16.
