Short abstract:

Africa CDC is building technical, regulatory and financing infrastructures to support sustainable R&D into, and local production of, pharmaceuticals and other health technologies that prioritise continental public health priorities. We map and explore the transformative potential of these efforts.

Long abstract:

During the Covid-19 pandemic the Africa CDC gained prominence as a technical agency committed to articulating and protecting the public health needs of the continent worst affected by the globally inequitable distribution evocatively decried as “vaccine apartheid”. Informed by this experience, it is now creating technical, regulatory and financing infrastructures to support sustainable R&D into, and local production of, pharmaceuticals and other health products and technologies that prioritise continental public health priorities – during and outside of health emergencies. This paper explores the transformative potential of these efforts in relation to three questions. First, what geopolitical imaginaries and conceptions of sovereignty, international cooperation and solidarity are being mobilised by Africa CDC in promoting investment in local innovation and manufacturing in the context of the “New Public Health Order” it is calling for? Second, how do these imaginaries articulate the role of African R&D and pharmaceuticals in promoting wellbeing on the continent in ways that nonmedical technologies cannot? Third, how do histories of exploitation, medical extractivism, and the conjoined experiences of subjugation/tutelage and abandonment at the hands of the “international community” during past public health emergencies and epidemics shape the organisation’s work in promoting R&D and local manufacturing? Drawing on key informant interviews and publications (academic, grey literature and policy and legislative documents), this paper seeks to develop some preliminary answers to these questions in order to map Africa CDC’s articulation of its potential in transforming the regional and global pharmaceutical landscape.