Local Manufacturing of Medical Products in Africa: Pipe Dream or Realistic Aspiration?

In recent times, Africa, like many other countries and regions of the world, has seen renewed calls for local manufacturing of medical products. These calls have attracted the attention of the continent’s highest political players, with African country presidents and heads of government led by South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwanda President Paul Kagame calling for acceleration of plans towards self-sufficiency of Africa, starting with vaccines, perhaps because of the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recently, President William Ruto was elected by his peers as the local manufacturing champion. Besides these political voices, agencies led by the African Union and Africa CDC have taken practical steps towards this goal with establishment of the Partnerships for African Vaccines Manufacturing (PAVM) initiative. The call for local manufacturing is not as new as we might imagine, however; the idea has been in place since 2007 when the African Union established the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa (PMPA).

A good point to ponder is just why these calls have taken so long to realize the tangible results of making Africa self-sufficient, or at least contribute significantly towards fulfilling the demand for medical products without having to import more than 70% of health products, mostly from India and China (among other source nations).

To fully realize this goal, we need to look at various enabling factors that must be addressed to establish a sustainable journey towards local manufacturing of medical products in Africa.

First, mutual, beneficial partnerships including but not limited to overseas companies and organizations are crucial. The co-existence of global, regional, and local manufacturers provides the necessary synergies to trigger development of the pharmaceutical industry in general. Anecdotal evidence shows that markets which have a good mix and coexistence of local, R&D-based manufacturers and overseas manufacturers tend to have better developed local manufacturing ecosystems overall. Often, local manufacturers and by extension the patient population tend to benefit from the early introduction of the latest medical technologies, expansion of medical education opportunities, and (most likely) passive technology transfer if not specific bilateral initiatives. It is important to cultivate partnerships across these different types of manufacturers and to identify areas of mutual benefit, including but not limited to technology transfer and voluntary licensing. One important player in this co-existence is the government, through policies that encourage these partnerships. It is worth noting that unilateral calls for immediate 100% localization of pharmaceutical manufacturing at the expense of the above mix of local/overseas manufacturers with little regard to other factors such as available local capacity could harm the pharmaceutical industry in the respective country if this results in the mass exit of R&D-based and overseas manufacturers.