African leaders have pledged to establish a continent-wide system for purchasing medicines at the annual African Union summit in Addis Ababa, but progress towards a pan-African medicines agency remains slow.
In a statement on Monday (19 February), the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) announced the establishment of a collective African medicines procurement mechanism, which could lead to “a new era of consistent demand for African manufacturers, empowering them to plan for the future and create a strong market worth over $50bn [€46bn].”
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“The decision will create a strong market for manufacturers and ensure the health security of all Africans. This will be the second independence of Africa,” added Africa CDC director general Dr Jean Kaseya.
This move is the latest development in the effort to establish a more unified system for producing medicines across Africa, a project that the European Commission has committed to supporting as part of the push towards African ‘health sovereignty’.
The AU has set a goal that by 2040, 60 percent of vaccines used in Africa will be produced locally.
Currently, less than one percent of vaccines are manufactured in Africa.
The issue of production and industrial capacity became prominent during the Covid-19 pandemic. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and others criticized the EU for “vaccine nationalism” when the bloc was slow to fulfill its promise to provide surplus vaccines to African countries. This was exacerbated when the EU, along with the United States, opposed a proposal by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization to partially waive intellectual property rights on vaccines to allow for low-cost production.
In 2021, the European Commission announced that it would offer financial and technical support for an African Medicines Agency and pharmaceutical sector, including three vaccine hubs in Africa that could potentially become pharmaceutical production facilities.
German pharmaceutical company BioNTech SE has also agreed to produce vaccines at facilities in Rwanda and Senegal.
The AMA would be an AU agency aimed at facilitating the standardization of medical regulations across the continent, modeled after the EU’s European Medicines Agency.
However, progress towards establishing an AMA has been hindered by the failure of over half of the continent’s governments to ratify the treaty for its establishment.
“To date, 27 countries have ratified the treaty, a significant milestone that should be celebrated,” stated members of the African Medicines Agency Treaty Alliance in a statement released during the summit. “However, it is imperative that all 55 member states ratify and deposit the instruments.”
South Africa and Nigeria, the two largest economies in Africa, are among the 18 states that have not yet signed the AMA treaty.
Earlier this month, EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides affirmed that the EU is committed to “full-fledged African health sovereignty” and that the bloc has mobilized €1.3bn for vaccine production across Africa.
