By Dr Janet Byaruhanga

What is it and why accelerate the achievement of its objectives now? The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa (PMPA) was developed in the framework of then NEPAD (now AUDA-NEPAD) and adopted in 2007. A business plan proposing a package of technical solutions to the challenges confronting the pharmaceutical industry was endorsed in 2012.

The PMPA is designed to catalyse local pharmaceutical production which in turn should contribute to improved public health outcomes through ensuring access, quality, availability, and affordability of the much needed essential products on the one hand and economic benefits through sustainability, competitiveness, and self-reliance of the pharmaceutical industry on the other.

In our continent, we have relied too heavily on imports for about 80 to 100% for our pharmaceuticals and medical consumables and that is not sustainable. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our continent also exposed that we lack capabilities and capacity to manufacture and supply the needed personal protective equipment (PPEs) as well as other essential drugs needed to curb the disease.

There are challenges the industry is confronted with that include the following, and are not limited to: 1) access to affordable financing, 2) access to technology and technical know-how, 3) inadequate human resource capacity, 4) small fragmented markets and poor market intelligence, 5) fragmented and weak regulatory systems, 6) fragmented and poor procurement and supply chain systems, 7) policy incoherencies across trade, industry, health, and finance, 8) poor business to business linkages and collaboration, 9) low investments in research and development as well as intellectual property. No single sector, government department, or organisation on its own can achieve these goals.

Therefore, the PMPA business plan proposes a package of solutions to the critical challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry to be delivered through multisectoral and multistakeholder actions. It is important to note that even with all these numerous challenges, a lot of opportunities exist and continue to be explored. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) for example, addresses a major challenge of small fragmented markets that have for a long time, been a disincentive to investors into African pharmaceutical manufacturing.  This had made African manufacturers to be considered unable to compete with Asian companies due to lack of scale in production because of small domestic or national markets.

The AfCFTA now creates a market of 1.3 billion people today, and 2.2 billion people by 2050. Our manufacturers can now be able to compete through enjoying significant economies of scale and scope. However, to get there, we need deliberate, bold, and thoughtful action.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa will strengthen the procurement and supply chain management system and use pooled procurement as an innovative mechanism to incentivise local manufacturing. The impact of this will be the attraction of leading generic pharmaceutical manufacturers to either build plants locally or to partner with local manufacturers and equip them to produce their products under licensed manufactures or in Joint-Ventures.

Moreover, the huge and fast-growing African pharmaceutical and healthcare market combined with such incentives will attract investments in the sector. The result as we have seen from the examples of Russia, Bangladesh and other countries that deliberately supported the development of LPP, will be an increase in pharmaceutical production-related foreign direct investment, huge investments in training and skills development, accelerated technology transfer agreements, significant job creation directly and through the development of supporting and related industries, strengthening of regulatory systems and finally; positive pressure on our educational systems to create the skills required to run the manufacturing plants or engage in research and development.

In other words, besides job creation, we will truly enter the knowledge economy and will not be left behind in the 4th Industrial Revolution.