CHIMPREPORTS
By Alex Nuwamanya
The 2021 high level summit on Expanding Africa’s Vaccine Manufacturing capacity strongly pointed to four factors blocking access to medicines in Africa, including lack of critical, yet most applied pharmaceutical additives such as pharmaceutical grade starch, sugar and cellulose additives.
The summit’s objective well aligned to President Museveni’s previous speech of the 4th Of June 2020 Kampala, and an address of January 2020 to more than 70 British companies at the inaugural Uk-African Business Forum in DoubleTree Hilton Hotel Central London.
On both occasions the president boldly proclaimed a decade of industrialization with a bias to local pharmaceutical ingredient production. The Social-Economic implications of such an industry are
sufficiently chronicled within the 2021-2026 NRM Manifesto, pages 48 and 66, 81 B, D to be exact.
Political will and thought leadership at the highest level will consign reliance on pharmaceutical grade imports while qualifying that pharmaceutical manufacturing is a not a matter to individuals or
an agency but a national issue.
Pharmaceutical grade starch for example, is the most applied ingredient in drug manufacturing majorly produced in India, China and Eastern Europe.
There is virtually no production on the African continent.
According to the cognitive market report 2021, a reputable leader in business projection. The global pharmaceutical grade starch market is projected to reach a volume of 156.3 million metric tons by
2025, translating to a USD 9.36 billion value .The East African regional bloc market at USD 294 million value while Uganda spends USD 20 million annually on pharmaceutical grade starch.
Uganda and Africa as a whole are not taking part in this production, a perennial syndrome we can attach to our frail balance of trade and relatively high cost of locally produced medicines. There is a rich body of evidence, that the cost of importing pharmaceutical excipients actually increases the cost of medicine by 7 percentage points.
According to Uganda investment authority, our chemical sector accounts for over 10% of Uganda’s manufacturing value added – the highest in the region, this implies that large capacity domestic drug plants, such as Cipla quality chemicals, Renne and Kampala pharmaceutical industries are potential markets for locally engineered pharmaceutical ingredients.
Regionally
The East Africa community (EAC) and Common Markets of central, East and Southern Africa (COMESA) remain destinations to Uganda’s formal exports with a share in total export earnings of 51%. These Blocs are home to more than 50 active drug manufacturing plants, with a combined population of 400 million.
We could therefore leverage on this broad market potential to produce pharmaceutical grade starch
beyond our domestic demands. Harnessing domestic and Regional instruments such as the recently
launched national Industrial policy with an aim of tapping into the 1.2 billion continental free market and The ambitious and yet realistic East African pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan 2017 –
2027(EAPMP) targets to reduce pharmaceutical ingredient imports from 70% to 50%.
Building on such fertile policy commitments could leap forward our industry’s value addition as a percentage of GDP from the current 27% while creating thousands of jobs and easing the
cost of producing drugs.
Pharmaceutical grade starch is a modified form of native starches extracted from maize and cassava. Figures by the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) is that Uganda’s annual production capacity is 5 and 5.5 metric tons of maize and cassava respectively.
Conversely our domestic consumption capacity is 2.56 million tons of maize and 60% of the cassava. With increasing investment in stress resistant maize and cassava varieties by the National Crops Resources Research Institute Namulonge (NACRRI) production is anticipated to double by 2030.
Paradoxically, with abundant local inputs to excipient manufacturing (cassava and maize), we heavily rely on imports from either china or India.
With such an excess agricultural produce, coupled up with unpredictable trade relations with our neighbors. It’s pertinent that emerging markets such pharmaceutical grade starch are expeditiously tapped into. This will buffer more than two million households engaged in either maize or cassava farming against investment losses while affording them an opportunity to improve their
livelihoods.
To understand why the president is championing a call to domestic pharmaceutical ingredient production, we need to view reliance on pharmaceutical imports as a risky affair in the face of national
health security.
China and India control the largest market share of globally most applied pharmaceutical ingredients. With both nations severely upset by the pandemic into lockdown, production lines disrupted and the workforce scaled down and yet met with domestic obligations.
India has had to restrict imports of 26 medicines and their excipients while the European Union introduced several export authorizations. This shows how individual countries are stretched at home.
If we don’t outsource pharmaceutical ingredients locally, global pandemics such as this could effectively break down our domestic production lines. An implication we can’t afford.
The writer is a pharmaceutical scientist
The post OPINION: Museveni’s Call on Domestic Pharmaceutical Ingredient Production Should be Embraced appeared first on Peril Of Africa.
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