One of the effects of the rapid globalisation that followed the dawn of democracy in South Africa in 1994 was the realisation that the country had fallen behind in many areas of hi-tech manufacture and that our industries were no longer competitive.

One such area was in bio-technology, specifically in the manufacture of vaccines. The State Vaccine Institute in Cape Town stopped all vaccine production in 2000 and from then on all vaccines were imported.

Egypt is now the only country in Africa that manufactures vaccines.

This situation was unsatisfactory because, apart from the fact that the country needs to be self-sufficient in vital areas like health care, there was no scope for developing scarce skills in bio-technology, a crucial area of technology.

As a result, the government decided to create a private-public partnership tasked with setting up a facility that would manufacture vaccines of the highest quality by world standards.

The aim is to have a vaccine institute that is capable of receiving pre-qualification status from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and to develop a vaccine that is of such value and importance that it is placed on the WHO's priority list for distribution by Unicef, the UN children's fund.

The organisation chosen to partner with the Departments of Health and of Science and Technology was The Biovac Consortium and this culminated in the formation of The Biovac Institute.

The Biovac Institute is well on the way to establishing a world class research and manufacturing facility in Pinelands, Cape Town.

In such an undertaking, there are two areas that need development: the physical plant and infrastructure and the people who will work there.

According to Sipho Mdleleni, general manager of human resources at The Biovac Institute, an important part of the the mandate of the partnership was to develop local skills.

"This is a highly specialised area and there is no ready supply of local people who have the skills," he says.

"We are part of a national strategy to develop biotechnology in the country, led by the Department of Science and Technology, and skills development is very much part of that.

"So we have had to build a pipeline, beginning at high school level, where we support initiatives to raise standards of maths and science, to graduate programmes for entry-level graduates and higher-level scientists working towards PhD degrees.

The key, of course, is to have enough matriculants proficient in maths and science to ensure that the universities can draw on the best of those to go into the bio-technology field.

For this reason the Biovac Institute has established links with Leap College, an academic institution which caters for the provision of maths and science education to children from dis- advantaged communities.

"Part of our engagement with Leap has been the development of a job shadowing programme at The Biovac Institute for learners at Leap," Mdleleni says.

The institute also has a relationship with the local universities using, for example, PhD students from the University of Cape Town in its research and development department.

This arrangement benefits both institutions but, Mdleleni explains, it is only on a small scale and it involves scientists already in the field, without growing the skills base.

"The challenge is to grow the organisation into a large-scale manufacturing facility governed by world standards," he says.

Biovac has a graduate development programme aimed at attracting top talent and developing it.

"The idea is to develop young scientists to work to world-class standards and to use them later to cascade skills downwards," he says.

The Biovac Institute's approach is two-pronged. The development of local skills is a long-term approach, but the target is to become a world-class manufacturing plant, certified to the highest standards, by 2013. So, in the short term, skills have to be imported as well.

One example of this is Richard van Duyse, the chief operating officer at the plant.

He is overseeing the conversion of the old Vaccination Institute into a world-class facility.

Van Duyse is Dutch and he has been assigned to Biovac by the German NGO GTZ, an organisation that assists development projects in the developing world.

Biovac, Van Duyse explains, wanted an experienced person help it achieve international status. His role is to set up the organisational structure, select and install the technology and formulate the planning phases.

GTZ is an organisation that encourages the use of experienced people who are close to retirement age to pass on the benefits of their knowledge and experience to worthy causes of this kind.

Van Duyse has a three-year contract at the Biovac Institute, which is nearing completion, and he has agreed to extend it for another three years.

He believes Biovac is on track to achieve its goals.

"It will cost a lot of money, but there is no reason why we should not achieve it," he says.

To achieve WHO prequalification status, Biovac must have its plant and processes in place but, Van Duyse explains, this is mainly for its own reference purposes because at that stage it will not be manufacturing a product.

"The next step will be for us to show we can manufacture a vaccine that is seen as important enough by the WHO to put it on the priority list for distribution by Unicef.

"We believe we will have such a product in Pentavalent - a five-in-one paediatric vaccine which contains inoculations against tetanus, diphtheria, polio, haemophilius influenza type B and hepatitis B.

"Before we get there, however, there is a strenuous process of testing and trials to go through."

Mdleleni believes they have the strategy in place to provide the necessary people for this process.

"Ours is a learning environment. We are passing the skills on to pupils, to young graduates, and through mentorship by the overseas experts we have engaged, to the entire organisation.