Health policy plays a major role in many African countries development plans. And many African countries have recently made commitments to create and nurture well-functioning pharmaceutical industries to provide medicines to their own, growing populations.
Health has also been a long-standing key part of commitments from China to African countries, initially in the 1960s through medical aid. Most recently, the 2015 Forum On China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) (and its associated 2nd Ministerial Forum on China-Africa Health Cooperation) included a pledge to encourage 10 large Chinese pharmaceutical and medical equipment enterprises to cooperate with African counterparts. Whether through exports of relevant drugs to African countries, factory building or other direct investment, China’s support for health systems is important.
UNAIDS has played an important role to date in supporting pilot Africa-China collaboration in health, most notably in Ethiopia and Uganda, including for the production of Anti-Retroviral medicines (ARVs). UNAIDS believes that 2018, the 18thyear since FOCAC was initiated, presents a one-time opportunity to radically scale-up and innovate the cooperation models to ensure more win-win for African countries.
To facilitate this scale up, Development Reimagined has been commissioned by the UNAIDS China office to conduct a country-based, comprehensive analysis of 21 African countries to help ambitious Chinese pharmaceutical players stake their first steps to understand the opportunities and landscape in the emerging continent. In addition, Development Reimagined has also been asked to design and facilitate a key “orientation” to China in August 2018 by over 20 senior African policy makers and industry figures, who will have an opportunity to meet first-hand the pharmaceutical industry leaders and stakeholders in China, and actively seek business leads and strategic partnerships. The orientation is being supported also by the Gates Foundation and China International Health Exchange and Cooperation Center (China’s leading health event organizer under the auspices of the National Health Commission – IHECC), and will also coincide with a series of high-profile health events leading up to 2018 FOCAC Summit, including the 3rd Ministerial Forum on China-Africa Health Cooperation, at which the country profiles will also be launched.
We are proud to be instrumental in what we hope is the start of a tremendous process as local pharmaceutical production in Africa gets ready to take off.
July 2018
