African countries losing out in the medical industry due to lack of patent rights

some African states have invested in research and development of vaccines and medicines, they have ended up relinquishing or selling IP rights to foreign firms, setting the vaccine manufacturing efforts back. Because of this, the African Union is, for instance, pushing to get back the IP technologies from the firms that bought them, which has proved to be an uphill task. and also mRNA hub in South Africa, for instance, under Afrigen attempted to get their mRNA technology from Moderna (the holders of its IP) to facilitate knowledge transfer to the ‘spokes’ (companies within the hubs network). However, Moderna refused to share the IP. Are African countries so ignorant ?