By Dr Michael Klein, Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Africa depends on imports for the majority of its medicine supply. Industry estimates place the figure at over 70% of pharmaceutical products consumed on the continent. For certain categories such as vaccines, biologics, and specialised therapeutics, the import share approaches 90% or higher. This level of external dependence creates a concentrated exposure that few other regions tolerate.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed what happens when global supply chains seize up. Export restrictions, air freight disruptions, and raw material shortages cascaded through pharmaceutical supply lines. Countries that relied on imported medicines found themselves competing for limited allocations alongside the rest of the world. Africa felt the effects acutely not because demand was small, but because purchasing power and domestic production capacity were insufficient to guarantee supply.
That experience was not an anomaly. Supply chain analysts point to structural fragilities in global pharmaceutical manufacturing: 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production is concentrated in China and India according to industry estimates. A disruption affecting either country would reverberate through every market that depends on those inputs. For Africa, which lacks manufacturing depth to substitute even a fraction of that capacity, the risk is existential rather than commercial.
Between 2026 and 2032, a substantial cluster of pharmaceutical patents will expire across multiple therapeutic categories. Industry sources tracking the patent cliff estimate that products representing more than $200 billion in annual global sales will lose exclusivity during this period. Cardiovascular, oncology, metabolic, respiratory, and central nervous system medicines all feature prominently in the expiries.
For pharmaceutical companies with commercialisation capability, this creates a rare structural opportunity. Patent expiries open markets to generic and biosimilar competition. In mature markets such as the United States and Europe, the response is well established: generic manufacturers file abbreviated applications, pricing erodes quickly, and volume shifts to lower-cost alternatives within months. In Africa, the picture is different. Many products that lose exclusivity globally do not automatically face local generic competition. The regulatory, commercial, and distribution infrastructure required to bring these medicines to African patients is often absent or fragmented.
That gap is the opportunity. A company with the capability to identify, license, register, commercialise, and distribute these products across multiple African markets can build a portfolio that outlasts individual product lifecycles. The patent cliff is not a one-off event. It is a recurring cycle. Each wave of expiries replenishes the pool of addressable products for operators who have built the infrastructure to handle them.
Local pharmaceutical production does more than shorten supply chains. It changes the economics of medicine access in three specific ways.
First, it reduces exposure to currency volatility. Medicines imported in foreign currency carry the cost of exchange rate fluctuations, which in many African markets have been severe. The South African rand lost approximately 40% of its value against the US dollar between 2020 and 2025. Pharmaceutical importers absorb this cost or pass it to patients and health systems. Local production shifts a portion of the cost base to local currency, dampening the impact of currency swings on medicine prices.
Second, local manufacturing enables supply responsiveness that offshore production cannot match. A local manufacturer can adjust batch sizes, reorder raw materials, and respond to demand fluctuations in weeks rather than months. For essential medicines, this responsiveness is a clinical requirement, not merely a commercial preference. Stockouts of antibiotics, antihypertensives, and insulin remain a persistent problem across African health systems. Local production capacity can reduce the frequency and duration of these gaps.
Third, manufacturing creates a foundation for pharmaceutical quality infrastructure. A manufacturing facility requiring water treatment, environmental monitoring, microbiological testing, and stability programmes builds permanent quality capability. These skills and systems outlive individual product lines. They become institutional assets that support the entire pharmaceutical ecosystem.
Manufacturing is the long-term goal, but it requires capital, regulatory approvals, technical expertise, and patient throughput that do not appear overnight. The path to manufacturing runs through commercialisation.
Building a commercial platform first means establishing relationships with multinational partners who need capable local representation. Several global pharmaceutical companies have rationalised their African portfolios in recent years, divesting brands that no longer fit their core strategic focus but continue to serve real patient needs. These products require a commercial home: a company with the regulatory capability to maintain registration, the sales infrastructure to reach prescribers and pharmacies, and the distribution network to make products available from urban hospitals to rural clinics.
A commercialisation-first approach generates revenue, builds regulatory track records, establishes brand equity with healthcare professionals, and creates the operational muscle for more complex activities downstream. Each product registered and sold adds to the company's dossier experience, its relationships with regulators, and its understanding of the market dynamics that determine whether a medicine reaches the patients who need it.
Supply chain resilience has entered boardroom vocabulary for good reason. The pharmaceutical supply chain is long, complex, and regulated at every node. A single interruption at an API manufacturer in Gujarat or a packaging facility in Europe can delay product availability across an entire continent for months.
Resilience is not about building a single manufacturing plant and declaring independence. It is about creating multiple options: multiple sources of supply, multiple distribution channels, multiple regulatory pathways, and the internal capability to switch between them when one route fails. For an African pharmaceutical company, this means cultivating relationships with suppliers in different regions, maintaining regulatory approvals across multiple countries, and building inventory buffers that account for the longer lead times and higher uncertainty that come with emerging market logistics.
The companies that invest in this capability will find themselves in demand not only from patients and health systems, but from multinational partners who increasingly require resilient local partners as a condition of market entry.
The term pharmaceutical sovereignty is gaining currency in policy circles. The African Union and several regional economic communities have made medicine localisation a stated priority. South Africa's Industrial Policy Action Plan identifies pharmaceutical manufacturing as a strategic sector. The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) is working to strengthen its capacity to evaluate and monitor locally manufactured products.
Policy support, however, is not the same as execution capability. Building a pharmaceutical company is a capital-intensive, heavily regulated, talent-dependent undertaking. It requires people who have done it before: executives who understand GMP, regulatory submission, pharmacovigilance, quality assurance, supply chain management, and the commercial realities of selling medicines in African markets. These skills exist on the continent, but they are often dispersed across multinational subsidiaries, consulting firms, and academic institutions. Assembling them under a single institutional roof is the core challenge.
That is what building an institution means. It does not mean erecting a factory and announcing a launch. It means creating the permanent organisational structures, systems, culture, and governance that allow pharmaceutical capability to outlive the founding team. It means building something that can keep serving patients, creating jobs, generating returns, and improving healthcare delivery for decades, not quarters.
The confluence of patent expiries, multinational portfolio rationalisation, policy support for localisation, and growing healthcare demand creates a window that will not stay open indefinitely. Companies that move now to build commercialisation capability, invest in quality systems, develop regulatory expertise, and lay the groundwork for manufacturing will have a structural advantage over those that wait for conditions to improve further.
Conditions will not improve on their own. The 70% import figure will shift only if deliberate action is taken to build the infrastructure that changes it. The capital is available. The talent exists. The market is ready. What has been missing in many attempts is the institutional commitment to build a pharmaceutical company as a permanent enterprise rather than a short-term venture.
That commitment is what determines whether Africa's pharmaceutical future is shaped by decisions made in other continents or by institutions built here, for the people they serve.
