Promoting Regional Value Chains in Africa: A pathway for accelerating Africa’s structural transformation, industrialization and pharmaceutical production

This year’s Africa Industrialization Day focused on the important role that the pharmaceutical industry in Africa can play in assuring a reliable and sustainable access to medicines for patients while also contributing to economic development.  In two panel discussions the reasons why the sector has been attributed priority in the context of the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III) as well as within the Accelerated Industrial Development of Africa (AIDA) were recapitulated and the importance of moving from rhetoric to action in supporting the industry was highlighted.

Tim Martineau, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, called local production of pharmaceuticals in Africa a “critical issue” and emphasized that support to building a sustainable industry in Africa will need to move a lot faster to ensure access to live-saving medicines in the future. A number of speakers stressed the need for resources to be made available to support UNIDO’s programmatic approach to scale up activities and effect transformative change in an African industry that is central and vital to public health.

Click here to read the full article on AID.

For more information: Mr. Juergen Reinhardt (J.Reinhardt [at] unido.org (J[dot]Reinhardt[at]unido[dot]org))