How Africa can strengthen the local supply chain, manufacturing and innovation of drugs and vaccines

At the recent Harvard Health Conference, I had the opportunity to present my thoughts on how to Strengthen local supply chains, manufacturing and innovation for vaccines and drugs in Africa.

My thoughts from the panel are summarised below

Invest in R & D in Africa

Investing in R&D in Africa will enable Africa securitise its drugs and vaccine supply chain and reduce its reliance on the Global North for their licensing to manufacture and distribute the vaccines and medicines they have developed through research. The various R&D labs across Africa should be encouraged, invested in and provided with strong IP protections so they can control their innovations and earn from their work.

Localise Vaccine & Drug Manufacturing in Africa

Africa relies on Asia and the Global North for the majority of its medication and vaccine supplies. This puts it at the mercy of these regions for its health security. Exisiting local manufacturers need to be supported by prioritising them for public procurement and by investing to expand their technical know-how. Localising manufacturing of drugs and vaccines in Africa will also make it easier to control quality and prevent prevalence of low quality medicines across the continent.

Harmonise Regulatory Approval for Medicines and Vaccines Across Africa

The current status that requires drug manufactureres and distributores to register seperately their medications in each of Africa’s 50+ countries makes it very cumbersome to quickly introduce medications to where they are needed across Africa. Further, it adds on extra layer of cost that make medicines more expensive than they should be in Africa. The Africa Medicines Agency (a specialised Agency of the Africa Union) is meant to harmoise regulatory approval for medicines across Africa and should be fast tracked. Harmonising regulatory approvals will make it easier for pooled procurement to happen and will help create the scale economies that will help Global Manufacturers of innovative molecules to take Africa seriously in events of pandemics where large buyers tend to be priortised.

Improve Existing Intellectual Property (IP) regimes for Drug & Vaccines licensing & pricing

Existing IP regimes make it difficult for local manufacturers in Africa to conduct quick tech transfers from the Global North innovators, that enable them to both be licensed for manufacturing and distribution at the same time. They also give enormous pricing power to the Global North Innovators making it overly expensive for all countries and especially African countries to be able to afford novel drug and vaccine molecules. Revamping the exisiting IP regimes is important to enable quick tech transfers to local African manufacturers and to also treat medications and vaccines as Essential Public Goods that need to have a more equitable price relationship between innovators and public sector buyers.

Remove bureaucratic constraints that make it difficult for local innovators to work with public sector

Exisiting laws create extensive bureaucratic constraints that undully extend the time to implement new local innovations in Africa Health Systems. Futher they limit the available budget that the public sector can invest to take up new innovations. The private sector and the general public can advocate and lobby African Parlimentarians to review these laws so as to make it easy for the public sector to take up local lnnovations. Further the public sector needs to fast track collaborations with lnnovators and priritise local innovations over and beyond imported ones in their procuement practices