Mahama Challenges Africa to End Pharma Dependency
President John Dramani Mahama has issued a direct challenge to financiers, regulators and industrialists across Africa to move the continent from health dependency to self-reliance, insisting health must no longer be treated as charity.
Addressing a high-level audience at the Alamein Africa Forum on Saturday, October 3, 2026, in the historic coastal city of El Alamein, President Mahama said Africa’s goal must be the health sovereignty and economic security of its 1.4 billion people.
“For decades, African finance ministers and global investors have made a fundamental error. They have treated health as a line-item cost and a social expenditure to be funded only when there is money left over,” he said. “Today, we are moving beyond that outdated perspective. Health is not a charitable cost. It is an investable, high-growth economic sector.”
President Mahama put industry leaders on the spot with three pivotal questions:
To financiers, he asked: “What specific de-risking instruments and blended finance structures do you need from governments to deploy patient capital into African pharmaceutical plants today?”
To regulators, “How quickly can we operationalise the African Medicines Agency to ensure a single drug approval opens the doors to all 54 AU member states?”
To industrialists, “What strategic partnerships do we need to move from basic packaging and fill-and-finish operations to full Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) synthesis on African soil?”
He warned that Africa’s current model is unsustainable with the continent imports over 70% of its pharmaceuticals and 99% of its vaccines, losing tens of billions of dollars in foreign exchange annually.
The vulnerability is deepened by projections from the OECD that traditional donor health assistance to Africa will plunge by 29% to 46% compared to 2024 levels.
Reframing the aid cut as a commercial opportunity, the President cited data showing health investment as a growth multiplier. Every dollar invested in basic maternal and newborn care yields $87 in economic and social returns, according to the Copenhagen Consensus, while the Lancet Commission found that reduced mortality accounted for nearly a quarter of income growth in developing nations in the early 2000s.
To address fragmentation, President Mahama announced HINGE – the Health Investment and National Gateway Enabler. Developed with the African Medicines Agency (AMA), Institut Pasteur and AfroChampions, the digital platform will streamline regulation, clinical validation and commercialisation into a single process for innovators and investors.
He said his Accra Reset Presidential Council is deploying dedicated Task Forces and a Reform Interlock Observatory to track continental capital flows and dismantle non-tariff barriers across regional value chains.
Citing successful continental models, he pointed to Egypt’s reduction of Hepatitis C prevalence from 10% to below 0.5% through local production and technology transfer with domestic champion Pharco, and Nigeria’s African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE) in Abuja, which is curbing the $6 billion lost annually to outbound medical tourism.
For Ghana, he said the Accra Reset includes expanding the National Health Insurance Scheme, introducing Free Primary Healthcare, establishing the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, and empowering the Food and Drugs Authority and the National Vaccine Institute to transition the country from consumer to producer.
“Let us stop treating health as a line-item expense,” President Mahama urged.
“African manufacturing does not serve a single country of 10 or 30 million people. It serves a single unified market of 1.4 billion consumers.”
Click to read more: https://opemsuo.com/author/hajara-fuseini/
