AfDB and IsDB join forces to strengthen Africa’s health protection systems through the pharmaceutical industry | African Development Bank

The African Development Bank Group and the Islamic Development Bank have signed a joint action plan for the development of the pharmaceutical industry in their African member states. The plan provides a new framework for enhanced cooperation and mutual development priorities, with a strong emphasis on strengthening the continent’s health protection systems.

The aide memoir was signed Thursday at the headquarters of the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, by Dr. Abdu Mukhtar, Director of Industrial and Trade Development for the African Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank, Director of the Economic and Social Infrastructure Department, Idrissa Dia.

The signing concluded two days of presentations and deliberations on the institutions’ health strategies for Africa and the African Development Bank’s Pharmaceutical Action Plan. During the sessions, teams from both institutions discussed a joint pipeline of pharmaceutical projects proposed for co-funding, as well as possible collaboration on advocacy and knowledge creation for their member states.

The joint action plan enables both institutions to build a shared pipeline of bankable projects around key complementary themes to which each institution would bring their comparative advantage. The plan includes loans to public and private sector projects and pharmaceutical development projects with a regional approach.

The institutions will also contribute to the organization of a global Pharmaceutical Business Forum in May 2023 at the African Development Bank’s Annual General Meetings. The event will bring together key pharmaceutical industry leaders including major pharmaceutical companies, continental, regional and governmental regulatory agencies, technology transfer entities. The meeting will discuss business opportunities, vaccine purchase agreements, pharmaceutical technology transfer agreements and project preparation tools, among other topics.

“The African Development Bank Group attaches great importance to partnerships in its contribution to sustainable development in Africa. Through partnership, we can go further, we can increase development effectiveness, we can leverage our complementarity and leverage our synergy,” said Solomon Quaynor, Vice President of Infrastructure, Private Sector and Industrialization.

In addition to developing a joint action plan, Anasse Aissami, Director General of IsDB Country Programs, encouraged participants to accelerate the implementation of the respective pharmaceutical programs, with an emphasis on increasing local production and regulatory support. Amer Bukvic, acting director general, Global Practices and Partnerships, echoed his remarks, adding: “We will firmly establish and operationalize cooperation in health and pharmaceuticals, and we will work hard to strengthen technical cooperation to improve”.

In 2017, the heads of the two institutions signed a co-financing memorandum of understanding to scale up co-financing activities in the period 2018-2020. A sum of $2 billion was earmarked for co-financing, divided equally between the two institutions. The MoU was extended until December 2023 to step up co-financing in strategic sectors such as infrastructure development; human development; private sector development and investment promotion.

“There is scope to expand our partnership under the umbrella of the existing MoU to our priority sectors,” noted Desire Vencatachellum, Director of Financial Mobilization and Partnerships for the African Development Bank at the meetings.

Following the signing, Dia stressed the need to increase cooperation across all sectors and human development initiatives given the strong strategic and operational alignment between IsDB and the African Development Bank in the health, pharmaceutical, education, water and sanitation sectors.

“The African Development Bank’s Pharmaceutical Action Plan aligns well with IsDB’s strategy in the pharmaceutical sector. We will work together and with other partners to deliver results in this sector, which is critical to Africa’s development,” said Mukhtar.

Dr. Ammar Abdo, Human Development Manager, said the IsDB-AfDB health industrialization initiative is an in-depth exercise between the two sisters’ institutions on strategic and operational health issues.”

Also present was Martha Phiri, director of the Human Development Department, who noted that the African Development Bank’s health infrastructure strategy is aligned with IsDB’s plans. “The respective health teams will explore a joint pipeline in line with this pharmaceutical collaboration pipeline,” she said.

The teams will continue to meet monthly to review progress and share insights on proposed joint projects. They also announced that they would hold a review meeting before December 2023 to assess the progress of sovereign and non-sovereign projects.