For Africa, by Africa: Bringing health product manufacturing home with PodTech™

Imagine you need to fix a creaky coffee table. You need to borrow some tools. So you take your car out and drive to your cousin’s house ten minutes away. You got what you needed, but did you get it in the most efficient way possible? Couldn’t your next-door neighbour have lent you their tools just as well?

Unfortunately, trade in Africa has been suffering a similar plight. Did you know that intra-African exports account for only 14% of total African trade? For context, in Asia, that number stands at 55%; in the European Union, it is 63%.

So why aren’t African countries trading with their neighbours? Historically, there have been trade restrictions and tariffs making it more cumbersome to trade within continental boundaries. Moreover, flying from Africa to Europe is often cheaper than flying from one African country to another. Getting a visa to visit another African country is another deal altogether.

Today, however, important changes are in the making…

Blurring internal boundaries.

In 2021, a major change kicked into action: the African Continental Free-Trade Area, or the AfCFTA. Signed by all members of the African Union, the treaty, when fully in force, will create an economic bloc worth US$ 3.4 trillion – a force to reckon with, given the right support.

Trade under the AfCFTA kicked off with Kenya and Rwanda shipping batteries, coffee, and other goods to Ghana. Trade under the AfCFTA is set to revolutionise intra-African trade across sectors. Most importantly, easing internal trade will make healthcare products produced in one or a few African countries more easily accessible to Africans in different corners of the landmass.

Recently, under its VaccinesWork initiative, Gavi published an article about Africa’s efforts to develop a robust local health product manufacturing ecosystem. The article covered an analysis, published in Public Health Challenges, of the AfCFTA’s impact on the African healthcare market. It also provided an overview of pan-African efforts to develop and fortify supportive infrastructure so that the health product manufacturing industry – and consequently, public health outcomes – on the continent can flourish.

Put together, relaxations on intra-African trade and impetuses to domestic health product manufacturing are the main ingredients to cook up a thriving African healthcare system.

Boosting Africa’s ability to make its own drugs and vaccines.

The African Union has its eyes set on an ambitious goal: to make 60% of its domestic vaccine needs locally by 2040. It also intends to ramp up production of drugs, diagnostics, and other health products to meet domestic demand.

This isn’t the beginning of the journey. On the contrary, Africa is steadily progressing on the path towards health sector self-sufficiency, the seeds of which were sown as far back as the 1930s.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, European companies like Glaxo, Abbott, and May and Baker set up shop in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, respectively. Though these companies weren’t homegrown, they set the stage for domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing on the African continent. In the past few decades, homegrown pharma companies like Fidson Healthcare, Emzor Pharmaceuticals, and more have become frontrunners in the local manufacturing landscape, especially as established multinationals have made the difficult decisions of axing direct operations in African countries.

Despite some challenges and setbacks, the African health manufacturing ecosystem is poised for tremendous growth. With a vast and robust supportive infrastructure set up in recent years, there’s no way for the industry to go but up.

In 2017, the African Union launched the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to provide coordinated assistance to African countries in dealing with health emergencies.

Set up in support of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa (PMPA), the African Medicines Agency (AMA) treaty came into effect in 2021.

In 2022, the African Development Bank (AfDB) launched the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) to help homegrown manufacturers access and develop the technologies they would need to boost regional production.

In 2023, Gavi approved a financing instrument called the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA). This initiative will make up to US$ 1 billion available over the coming decade to fortify African vaccine production.

The time for action is now.

The authors of the aforementioned analysis highlight an important point. These treaties, initiatives, plans, and ideas are all well and good. But now, it is more important than ever before to act on these ambitious ideas.

In this post-pandemic time, when the wounds left by the Covid-19 virus and a lack of effective global support are still smarting, Africa’s plans for a self-sufficient healthcare future must be met with decisive action.

One of the authors of the analysis lists the key enablers of making Africa’s health sector dreams a reality. In addition to continued and sustainable funding, strong political will and commitments, the development of transport networks, and workforce development, she highlights the importance of creating regional hubs.

Not every country in Africa can or will produce every drug and every vaccine that its population needs. With the AfCFTA, every country doesn’t have to.

There is no time to lose in setting up effective regional hubs which address the specific epidemiological landscapes of each African region. From small molecules to biopharmaceuticals, from gene therapies to vaccines, from APIs to finished products – there is nothing these hubs shouldn’t be able to achieve.

As transportation networks develop and it becomes possible to reach people in the remotest parts of the continent, these hubs should be able to keep up. They should be designed such that they can be expanded and modified, rapidly adapting to disease outbreaks and changing epidemiological patterns. Essentially, they should effectively serve the regions within which they are located; limitations in existing local infrastructure shouldn’t come in the way.

Modular construction is the answer.

With no time to lose, prefabricated modular pharmaceutical factory systems offer the best solution to Africa’s pharma infrastructure problems. Compared to traditional construction, it takes half as much time to get these up and running. Nonetheless, they are just as robust as traditional factories, with no limitations on operation time.

With only basic utilities and electricity connections required on-site, these factories can be established in fairly resource-limited settings. With additional modular units easy to add on, these factories can be adapted quickly to meet evolving demands and disease burdens.

PodTech™’s podules™ are engineered to provide each of these benefits and more. They come with air handling and HVAC systems, fire suppression systems, double insulation, and weather-proof construction. Health sector stakeholders in Africa can deploy them to produce gene and small-scale cell therapies, for R&D, as laboratories, and for patient recovery, inoculation suites, and contained filling areas. Pretty much any cleanroom application you can think of.

From design and engineering to factory acceptance tests, site transfer, commissioning, and qualification, PodTech™ gets it all done. Built and assembled at our manufacturing facility in the UAE, shipped to your factory site, and ready in no time to provide African countries with the health solutions they need, when and where they need them.

As Africa’s health sector grows from strength to strength, join hands with PodTech™ to take portable pharma factories to the continent and become part of the revolution that is in the making.