Opinion: These innovators are transforming African health care

Home-grown African solutions are well-positioned to accelerate access to health products in markets across Africa — and it is time to support them.

African health technology innovators have developed promising solutions to address the continent’s health care access challenges, but realizing their full potential will require bold action from governments and international aid agencies to integrate these local innovations into public health systems.

Health systems across Africa face long-running challenges around access to health care and health products. Systemic supply chain issues, such as fragmentation and low visibility, undermine access to health products in local markets, leaving patients and consumers unable to find or purchase essential health products when they need them.

The COVID-19 pandemic spotlighted the harsh reality of how supply chain gaps impact timely access to critical health supplies, particularly during a crucial, high-stakes period. Yet, as populations grow rapidly across the continent, macroeconomic headwinds mean that governments’ daunting task of driving universal health care access is more difficult than ever before.

Emerging private sector innovations

Within this context, an emerging crop of leading health technology innovators are enabling access to health products and appear well-positioned to support governments and public health supply chains at scale, a new report shows. The report identifies 24 Africa-focused innovators at the forefront of transforming access to health products. These innovators operate across 33 African countries and are deploying a range of locally driven solutions to effectively address health care access challenges.

The majority of these innovators offer order and inventory management solutions that connect providers — pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals — to distributors and manufacturers, enabling these providers to efficiently order, manage, and, in some cases, finance inventory through digital channels. This is bridging fragmentation gaps, reducing providers’ reliance on open drug markets, and minimizing the risk of purchasing falsified products. Collectively, these innovators in order and inventory management are already serving 50,000 hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies across the continent.

Other dominant solutions include online pharmacies, which enable consumers to order essential health products remotely and have them delivered to their homes; and product protection and visibility solutions, which ensure product movement along supply chains is better monitored, to safeguard quality. This is particularly vital given the prevalence of substandard or falsified medicines in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, Africa accounts for 42% of falsified medicines reported, while as much as 20% of the medicines sold on the continent are falsified.

The need for bold action

Unless bold action is taken by African governments, aid agencies of Western governments, and global health institutions, these local solutions are unlikely to leverage their capacities to reach unserved populations. Innovators need significant partnerships and advocate for donors to de-risk government contracts through revolving funds that can minimize the effects of payment delays. In order for them to be responsive, we must create a pro-innovation landscape for them to operate in.

African governments across the continent can leverage innovators to support public supply chains and advance public health goals. This is already happening in Nigeria, where governments, at national and subnational levels, have contracted innovators to support vaccination distribution campaigns, provide health logistics management systems, and digitize fleet management processes. More governments across the continent must boldly follow suit.

International aid agencies must also rethink their approach to supply chain purchasing on the continent. Rather than apply Western solutions or stick with traditional, incumbent players to meet the unique challenges facing African health systems, it is time to test and adopt new, technology-driven, and locally grown solutions that are demonstrating high potential.

To do so, international aid agencies should consider four bold, catalytic actions to engage technology-enabled innovations:

1. Support the development of evidence of innovators’ impact on cost-savings and cost-effectiveness.

2. Where evidence of impact is strong, they must shape new partnerships that leverage leading innovators’ capacities to reduce costs and advance sustainable increases in product access.

3. As they engage in partnerships, global health institutions must adapt contracting approaches to integrate innovators into major programs.

4. Global health institutions must also support efforts to simplify local, regional, and global regulatory pathways to enable innovation-friendly environments for high-potential innovators.

Across Africa, this emerging crop of locally grown solutions is thriving in complex markets with minimal engagement from the public health community. It is time to change that — to take bold action and truly reshape the international health agenda.