The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Monday launched the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, an independent institution that will help improve Africa’s access to technologies for making medicines, vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.
The foundation will work as a technological intermediary connecting technology suppliers with companies and will act as a deal maker for the private sector, assisting in negotiations over critical technologies required for production and innovation.
Speaking at the AfDB’s 2023 annual meetings in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the bank’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, said the foundation will also help derisk current investments by development partners, including the $3bn that will be invested by the AfDB, to build the pharmaceutical sector in Africa.
“As a trusted and neutral intermediary, the foundation will offer the space for global companies to transact with African companies and research institutes,” Adesina said. “It will allow easier diversification into new product categories and reduce chances of local companies investing into production areas with unknown market outcomes.”
The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation is supported by Africa’s heads of state and governments, including SA, and will also include indigenous vaccine manufacturing capacity.
While efforts have been made to move vaccines manufacturing capacity to Africa, including the m-RNA technology, and progress was made in countries such as SA, Rwanda and Morocco, the continent still manufactures 1% of its vaccines needs.
This lack of capacity to manufacture basic pharmaceutical drugs, or vaccines, continues to place the health security of the entire continent at risk.
Adesina said Africa’s aspirations to build regional production capacity in the pharmaceutical sector is not part of an industrial development agenda to increase employment, promote a positive trade balance and reduce healthcare expenditure, it is also part of the plan to build a quality healthcare defence system,
“An important lesson from Covid-19 was that eliminating a pandemic in richer countries was not sufficient to thwart the global threat of new variants,” Adesina said. “And while global governance needs to address the concerns of vaccine nationalism to avert the situation we witnessed in 2021 and 2022, each region needs to rethink its capacity to cater to the health of its own people.”
AfDB pharmaceuticals and health senior adviser Padmashree Sampath said access to technology and related know-how for production, mobilisation of domestic resources for technological upgrading and the lack of possibilities for product diversification are impediments for pharmaceutical companies in Africa.
“Changing this requires a structural shift, it requires giving greater support to African companies at all levels of the pharmaceutical supply chain,” Sampath said.
She said African governments will need to offer more long-term support and incentives for local companies by helping creating partnerships and facilitating market creation for locally produced pharmaceutical products.
“However, without parallel emphasis on technology access, tacit know-how sharing, and learning, none of the other incentives deliver. Technology, therefore, is a central issue that needs to be addressed holistically,” she said.
The foundation will be set up in Kigali, Rwanda.
Adesina, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, AU chair Moussa Faki, director-general of the World Health Organisation Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Trade Organisation Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former German chancellor Angela Merkel will be part of the eminent advisory council.
Thuletho Zwane is in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the AfDB’s annual meetings
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