In Africa, where the institute is present in nearly a dozen countries, the Pasteur Institute's Dakar facility plans to roll out potentially game-changing rapid testing kits, and has earned African Union designation as a coronavirus reference center.
Yet even as the African facilities are lauded for their work and state-of-the-art equipment, some see them entwined with France’s colonial legacy, amid growing calls for building a home-grown response to COVID-19 and other health crises.
Others, however, see Pasteur’s presence in places like Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Yaounde (Cameroon) or Antananarivo (Madagascar)—answerable to national health ministries and mostly staffed and headed by Africans—as an essential part of the continent’s research landscape and development.
France designates roughly $7.6 million in annual funding to Pasteur Institute facilities in Africa and Southeast Asia — many located in former French colonies—along with another $4 million for the current coronavirus response.
Pasteur Institute’s Girard says its facilities in Africa are essentially African ones — even if they get some French support.
