Kigali, March 13, 2023 - Six ISO-sized shipping containers for the first BioNTainer landed in Kigali on Monday, marking an important milestone in the establishment of scalable mRNA vaccine production in Africa, thanks to the partnership between the Government of Rwanda and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX, “BioNTech”).

President Paul Kagame welcomed the succesful shipment of the BioNTainer to Rwanda as a positive step towards ensuring equitable access to mRNA vaccines on the continent.

“A historic milestone today as the first BioNTech’s BioNTainers arrived in Rwanda, exactly three years since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in our country. This system will allow end-to-end mRNA vaccine production in Africa for the first time.”

A state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for the production of mRNA-based drugs and product candidates is being developed in Kigali, Rwanda, following the groundbreaking in June 2022. The facility will be initially housing two sets of BioNTainers for mRNA vaccine production in bulk and is expected to become a node in a decentralized and robust end-to-end manufacturing network in Africa.

BioNTech is advancing mRNA-based vaccine candidates to address malaria and tuberculosis, based on the Company’s mRNA platform. The malaria vaccine candidate BNT165 has entered clinical trials in December 2022. The clinical trials for the tuberculosis vaccine candidate BNT164 are expected to enter first-in-human trials shortly.

Rwanda is the first, among the selected three African countries, to host the mRNA Manufacturing Facility.  Vaccines to be manufactured in this Africa-wide network will be dedicated to people residing in member states of the African Union, with the aim to support access to novel medicines.