Health experts drawn from 11 East and Southern African countries have called for the acceleration of regional drug production to reduce overreliance on imports.
The experts have converged in Mombasa for a three-day forum aimed at reducing Africa’s heavy dependence on imported health products, vaccines, and technologies, with officials setting an ambitious target of producing 60 per cent of the continent’s health products locally by 2040.
Stakeholders contend that this overdependence has exposed African health systems to supply chain disruptions, export bans, and price volatility during global crises.
The meeting, convened by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), convened a technical working forum focusing on the local manufacturing of health products and technologies.
The IGAD Secretariat, under its Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Programme, brought together regulators, manufacturers, government ministries, and development partners, including the World Bank, the East African Community (EAC), and the East, Central, and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC).
The technical working forum on local manufacturing of health products and technologies is being convened by the IGAD Secretariat ahead of the Regional Community of Practice (CoP) under the Health Emergency Preparedness Response and Resilience Programme.
Dr. Stephen Njuguna, chair of the Community of Practice for Local Manufacturing, said the scale of Africa’s import bill on health products makes the push for local production urgent.
“Africa is importing about 80 percent of pharmaceuticals and about 99 per cent of vaccines, and it’s like we’re basically importing all health products,” Njuguna said.
He said the conversation is shifting from country-level manufacturing to a regional approach that can achieve economies of scale.
Dr. Njuguna said expanding local pharmaceutical manufacturing is crucial for Africa to ensure health security and reduce its heavy import reliance.
He said African governments should embrace a continent-wide initiative aimed at reducing reliance on imported medicines and vaccines to spur domestic industry growth.
“We need now to start thinking without boundaries. We need to look at Africa as a region and talk about regional manufacturing, or probably even continental manufacturing,” he said.
Dr. Mohammed Elduma, Head of the Health Unit at the IGAD Secretariat, said the forum was born out of lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and recurring disease outbreaks such as Ebola, which exposed Africa’s limited capacity to manufacture its own vaccines.
“We don’t have a vaccine for the new strain of Ebola. I think we need to have the capacity to act fast when we have a challenge like this,” Elduma said, adding that IGAD is taking the lead on the local manufacturing agenda in partnership with ECSA-HC and other regional bodies.
“The manufacturing in Kenya can have a market in Zambia or in South Africa, in Sudan, or in Egypt,” he said, noting that a regional market outlook would also boost manufacturers’ returns on investment.
Dr. Ramesh Govindaraj, Lead Health Specialist at the World Bank, said policy harmonization, stronger national regulatory authorities, and greater private sector participation remain central to the agenda.
“I think we are making progress, and I think the convening of this forum is evidence of our coming together,” Govindaraj said.
He noted that financing, technical capacity, and intellectual property remain key bottlenecks for manufacturers.
Dr. Mwesigye John Patrick, Director of the EAC Regional Centre of Excellence for Vaccines, Immunization, and Health Supply Chain Management, said the continent spends heavily on imported medicines, a gap he said should attract investment.
“The continent spends in excess of 28 billion US dollars annually in procurement of medicines. This is a huge area where we can have African investors; we can have external investors invest in the production of medical products,” he said.
He added that the EAC is finalizing a new ten-year Regional Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan of Action and has established pooled procurement mechanisms to guide manufacturers on regional demand.
Wilson Chandomba, an African pharmaceutical value chain expert, urged countries to build on existing manufacturing successes, citing Kenya’s pharmaceutical industry, which dates back to 1957, and called for pooled negotiation on raw materials to lower costs and strengthen quality assurance across the region.
“The more we focus on our success stories, the more we become stronger, and we do it. And yes, we can do it,” Chandomba said.
By Ramadhan Nassib
