There can be no place on earth with a greater need for medicines but with the poorest supply than Africa. Home to many of the least developed nations on earth, economic poverty, political instability, inadequate infrastructure and an inhospitable climate all conspire against the ability to provide drugs to people in areas where tropical diseases are endemic.
Yet two eminent organisations – the World Bank and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) – have suggested that Africa could become the next major force in global pharmaceutical manufacturing.
For this to happen, enormous commitment and massive input of resources from international organisations, national governments and individual pharma companies would be required in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
Simply throwing money – directly or indirectly – at the problem is clearly not the answer: supplying vaccines, antiretrovirals, antimalarial drugs and antibiotics at minimal cost or free of charge has had only a small effect on disease levels.
In an ideal world, Africa would have a domestic pharma manufacturing industry to enable the local supply of the most urgently required generic drugs in the areas of greatest need at an affordable cost. But even with low-cost manufacturing, such enterprises are unlikely to be viable, let alone profitable, so some capacity would have to be diverted to higher value products for export.
And even were foreign pharma companies prepared to put in the capital investment and transfer of technology to make this a possibility, there would still be huge logistical difficulties, the lack of a healthcare infrastructure to interface with the patients and the problems of counterfeiting to contend with.
China, India, Brazil and, to some extent, eastern Europe, have attracted investment because companies in the developed economies could see the possibility of making a return. The existing levels of industrial development and education were such that there was a base on which to build. But the same does not seem to be true of the least developed African countries.
It would be nice to believe that the World Bank and UNCTAD are right, and Africa can create a thriving pharma manufacturing sector, but I fear it will be not so much an uphill struggle as a sheer rockface to climb.