The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has partnered with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on a human capacity development initiative in South Africa that will focus on developing skills in good manufacturing practices (GMPs) for biomanufacturing.

This partnership will provide training grants to 112 South African participants to attend courses through the existing African Biomanufacturing Workforce Development Programme at the CSIR and will further develop its contents.

The programme will run over two years, from this year to 2025.

These training courses are focused specifically on offering hands-on training and skills development in biomanufacturing.

The courses are part of the SAVax project that GIZ implements in South Africa on behalf of the German government.

With this, the GIZ says, it supports the South African Department of Science and Innovation to strengthen local vaccine manufacturing, aiming to improve access to vaccines for the continent.

To do so, the GIZ says it supports skills development within the biomanufacturing ecosystem and plans to train at least 250 professionals by December 2025.

The partnership between the CSIR and the GIZ is said to be aligned with various initiatives geared towards building local manufacturing of various products such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, biopharmaceuticals and vaccines in Africa.

Moreover, the GIZ support will also focus on up-skilling CSIR staff in acquiring international skills in GMPs for biomanufacturing.

This is aligned with the CSIR’s strategic project of establishing a fully equipped open innovation pharmaceutical facility in future, supporting skills development and technology localisation for GMPs for biomanufacturing.

“This grant funding will be instrumental in developing our staff members, which will enable further knowledge transfer within the CSIR and the country,” says Bioprocess Technology Development chief researcher Dr Santosh Ramchuran.

It is envisaged that the skills training in GMPs for biomanufacturing by international experts of CSIR staff will enable them to become the next generation of trainers who can transfer these skills to other participants.

“This train-the-trainer model will support skills development in biomanufacturing technologies with the goal of increasing the availability of affordable vaccines for low medium income countries,” Ramchuran avers.