The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), KAIST of Korea, and the Kenya-AIST Council exchanged a memorandum of understanding on trilateral cooperation for vaccine research and development during a signing ceremony, which was held on the sidelines of the Korea-Africa Summit, on June 4 at KAIST’s Dogok Campus in Seoul. Prof. Kyung-Soo Kim (left), Senior Vice President for Planning and Budget of KAIST, Dr. Jerome Kim (center), Director General of IVI, and Prof. Jennifer Wanjiku Khamasi, Acting Principal of Kenya-AIST pose for a photo as they exchange the MOU. Credit: IVI

June 4, 2024, SEOUL, Korea — The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) exchanged a trilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Kenya-AIST Council at KAIST’s Dogok Campus on June 4, 2024, the first day of the Korea-Africa Summit in Seoul.

Under the MOU, the three institutions will seek cooperation in areas such as vaccine research and development through global joint funding, support for student education and exchange, collaboration with international research institutions on clinical studies, recruitment of faculty at Kenya-AIST, support for curriculum development, and global healthcare initiatives. This MOU is a follow-up measure to the agreement signed between KAIST and IVI in November 2023.

Kenya-AIST is the first higher educational institution to be set up abroad that benchmarks KAIST of Korea. With the feasibility study completed in 2014-15, the Kenya-AIST project commenced campus construction in 2019, nearing completion this year. It will start as a graduate school, offering advanced academic programs in mechanical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, ICT engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, and agricultural biotechnology.

Representatives from KAIST attending the MOU signing ceremony included President Kwang-Hyung Lee, Prof. Kangho Lee, who is a Kenya-AIST Advisory Committee Member, and Prof. Jeong Seok Lee of the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering. Attendees from Kenya included Prof. Emmanuel Mutisya, Chairman of the Kenya-AIST Council, and Prof. Jennifer Wanjiku Khamasi, Acting Principal of Kenya-AIST. Attendees from IVI included Dr. Jerome Kim, Director General, Dr. Manki Song, Deputy Director General, Science, and Dr. Kyung Taik Han, Deputy Director General, Government & Public Relations.

The three-way partnership comes at a time when IVI is pushing to open the IVI Africa Regional Office in Rwanda and its first country office in Africa in Kenya, which will also serve as the office for the ‘Advancing Vaccine End-to-end Capabilities in Africa’ (AVEC Africa) initiative. AVEC Africa seeks to build capacity and sustainability of the African vaccine ecosystem, including manufacturing, by implementing end-to-end research and development projects across Africa. To this end, IVI is closely collaborating with Africa CDC’s Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) program, which aims to manufacture 60 percent of the continent’s vaccine needs locally by 2040.

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About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI)

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a non-profit international organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme with a mission to discover, develop, and deliver safe, effective, and affordable vaccines for global health.

IVI’s current portfolio includes vaccines at all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries, such as cholera, typhoid, chikungunya, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, hepatitis E, HPV, COVID-19, and more. IVI developed the world’s first low-cost oral cholera vaccine, pre-qualified by the World Health Organization (WHO), and developed a new-generation typhoid conjugate vaccine that also achieved WHO prequalification in early 2024.

IVI is headquartered in Seoul, Republic of Korea with a Europe Regional Office in Sweden, an Africa Regional Office in Rwanda, a Country Office in Austria, and a Country and Project Office in Kenya. IVI additionally co-founded the Hong Kong Jockey Club Global Health Institute in Hong Kong and hosts Collaborating Centers in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. 41 countries and the WHO are members of IVI, and the governments of the Republic of Korea, Sweden, India, Finland, and Thailand provide state funding. For more information, please visit https://www.ivi.int.