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Masisi’s multi-billionaire vaccine connection vows to deliver

Partners: Soon-Shiong and Masisi met in Los Angeles in September PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO
Partners: Soon-Shiong and Masisi met in Los Angeles in September PIC: MORERI SEJAKGOMO

President Mokgweetsi Masisi is ending his year on a high note after recently securing commitments from a Los Angeles-based multibillionaire for fast-tracking development of vaccine production in Botswana. Staff Writer, MBONGENI MGUNI reports

Patrick Soon-Shiong, a South African-born multibillionaire based in the US, is vowing to move quickly beyond the agreement he signed recently with Botswana and speedily establish vaccine manufacturing in the country.

While well-meaning Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) have been signed before with little ground or progress made after that, Soon-Shiong has said he intends to have a manufacturing facility operational at the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub’s Icon Building by 2026. The facility will produce vaccines for COVID-19, cancer as well as next generation cell-based immunotherapies.

Editor's Comment
Violence doesn't solve anything!

Our weekly edition carries painful articles of people being murdered. Whilst some are classified as Gender Based Violence (GBV), there are still a large percentage of murder cases, which often happen at drinking spots, after people are heavily intoxicated. We have in the past carried articles where an individual was murdered because they refused to give someone a cigarette, and sadly this is where we are at now!In this very edition, there is an...

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