This year’s significant geopolitical developments have tested long-held assumptions about global systems. If anything, this has underscored the importance of regionalization, with regions recognized as critical units for resilience, scale, and security. Regionalized vaccine manufacturing serves as a spearhead towards strengthening broader health sovereignty, security, and equitable access for populations, particularly in outbreak scenarios.
At the same time, regionalization is not a retreat from wider international cooperation. On the contrary, it depends on it. Regionalized vaccine manufacturing relies on strong intergovernmental cooperation, both within and between regions. No region will ever be entirely self-sufficient. International collaborations around vaccine R&D, regulatory alignment, investments, and vaccine procurement remain critical.
Realizing our collective Vision for 2040 – as published in April 2025 – of a world in which regionalized vaccine manufacturing is fully operational requires three urgent priorities to be addressed: translating political will into action, ensuring predictable demand, and strengthening and harmonizing regulatory systems.
Advancing alignment across national, regional, and global levels toward this Vision has been a central priority of the RVMC Secretariat’s work in 2025, reflected in our hosting of the first Sustainable Markets Convening, which brought together a diverse group of stakeholders - from government leaders and global health institutions to manufacturers and civil society - to explore how predictable demand can help drive a resilient, regional vaccine ecosystem.
At a regional level, we co-hosted the 2nd Vaccines and Other Health Products Manufacturing Forum with Africa CDC, Gavi, and the Unified Procurement Authority of Egypt (UPA) to maintain progress toward the African Union’s 60% local production goal. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we worked with PAHO to strengthen understanding of the regional landscape and convened partners through the Value Chain Forum. In Southeast Asia, we collaborated with Thailand’s National Vaccine Institute, the World Bank, and IFC to support the next phase of the ASEAN Vaccine Security and Self-Reliance strategy.
These engagements demonstrate strong political commitment and growing momentum. At the same time, our baseline report, Towards Regionalised Vaccine Manufacturing, launched on the sidelines of the G20 Health Ministers Meeting in November, confirms that regionalized vaccine manufacturing remains at a formative stage. While the foundations for sustainability are emerging, the conditions required for long-term success are not yet fully in place - reflecting different starting points and developmental trajectories across regions.
We therefore continue to see significant opportunities for regions to learn from one another - both to understand how different regional pathways are evolving and how they can interact and reinforce one another’s route to sustainability. Strengthening collaboration and knowledge exchange across regions will be essential to building on national investments, improving complementarity across vaccine portfolios, and creating more resilient and self-sustaining systems.
Together, the Towards Regionalised Vaccine Manufacturing report and regional analyses developed in collaboration with WHO and CHAI provide a strong evidence base to support decision-makers across Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Building on this foundation, RVMC is already looking ahead to how this evidence can be translated into action in 2026 - supporting countries and projects to accelerate progress, helping to derisk investment decisions, and enabling closer alignment between routine immunization and outbreak response capacities.
Looking ahead, we recognize that global headwinds will persist and that the path toward regionalized vaccine manufacturing will remain complex. I am therefore grateful to our founding partners - CEPI, the World Economic Forum, and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine - for extending RVMC 2.0 through 2027, enabling us to continue delivering against our strategy at a time when this work is increasingly essential.
As we enter 2026, RVMC’s role will be to help bridge strategy and execution: supporting decision-makers with evidence, facilitating alignment across regions, and reinforcing the multilateral enablers that allow regional systems to function effectively. Through this shared effort, I remain confident we can realize our vision of a world in which strengthened regional vaccine ecosystems complement existing ones, being locally responsive, regionally led, and globally connected.