AU Development Agency Crafts $18.2 M Pharmaceutical Roadmap Amid Global Funding Squeeze

As Africa’s health sector reels from the potential blowout of a freeze on USAID funding, the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) has launched an 18.2-million-dollar five-year roadmap targeting pharmaceutical autonomy. Looking to boost pharmaceutical self-sufficiency to around 50%, the Plan has identified 24 medical products for local manufacturing.

The ambitious initiative was launched on the sidelines of the African Union summit last week with several senior officials attending the ceremony at the Radisson Blu Hotel. While Africa shoulders 25% of the world's global burden of disease, the continent manufactures just around 3% of its medicine supply.

Speaking during the launch ceremony, Senait Fisseha (Prof), Vice President of Global Programs at the Susan T. Buffet Foundation underscored the need to manage reliance on imports. She referred to the vulnerabilities of the pharmaceutical supply chain on a continent that faces a serious funding gap in the health sector.

“It is exacerbated by the recent cuts in global health funding by USAID which could amount to 60 billion dollars,” Senait noted.

She also noted the need to reform the approach towards the health sector as funding dries up globally.

“I’m disappointed about the global budget cuts, but I’m also hoping they will force us to reimagine a different way of doing things. We cannot make progress by continuing the same approaches of the last 20 or 30 years,” the Professor noted.

The roadmap also aims to address the structural, regulatory, and financial challenges impeding pharmaceutical manufacturing on the continent. According to NEPAD’s 2024 annual report, improving the African health system faces a $66 billion annual funding gap.

Public health needs were given the highest priority with the top ten diseases challenging the sector being subjected to significant literature review and public stakeholder consultation.

Nardos Bekele, Chief Executive Officer of AUDA-NEPAD, highlighted the importance of prioritizing medical products to address Africa’s high disease burden. The necessity of charting a strategic path toward building a robust, self-reliant pharmaceutical industry was stressed by the CEO.

Antibiotics, Tuberculosis medication, antimalarials, and HIV medication were identified as a high need in the market while intravenous fluids, insulin analogs, and stroke medication were increasingly being demanded. Ethiopia’s health landscape reflects the continental trend as the country remains one of the top 30 burden countries in incidences of TB and HIV.

Mekdes Daba (M.D), Ethiopia’s Minister of Health, called for strategic investments to bolster efforts in supplementing sexual and reproductive health endeavors to safeguard a collective future. She pointed to the need to explore appropriate funding mechanisms and increase domestic resource mobilization to meet the target.