The government is implementing measures to expand the country’s pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, improve access to financing, and create an enabling environment for local producers, the Vice-President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has said.
She said the government was committed to ensuring that the private sector, especially small and medium-sized manufacturers, would benefit from government-supported industrial financing schemes, targeted tax incentives, and technology transfer programmes to bolster local pharmaceutical production capacity.
The Vice-President said this in a speech read on her behalf by the Policy Advisor, Political Affairs, of the Office of the Vice-President, Dr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, at the opening of a three-day African Healthcare Manufacturing Trade Exhibition and Conference (AHMTEC 2025) in Accra last Tuesday.
She reaffirmed the government’s unflinching commitment to transforming the nation’s healthcare manufacturing industry into a globally competitive hub.
“We will nurture local innovation and protect it through strategic procurement and pro-African industrial policies,” she said.
Prof. Opoku-Agyemang added that transforming Africa’s health manufacturing capacity required coordinated investment in infrastructure, skills development, and research to improve competitiveness and quality assurance.
The AHMTEC 2025 was organised by the Federation of African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (FAPMA) and Vizuri Health Dynamics.
The conference brought together leading manufacturers and healthcare leaders.
More than 200 delegates, 46 speakers, and representatives from 111 organisations across 26 countries are attending.
They include Ghanaian pharmaceutical manufacturers and stakeholders, regarded as central to fulfilling the government's Agenda for Jobs and its strategic aim of establishing a pharmaceutical manufacturing hub in West Africa.
Self-reliant
The Vice-President emphasised that Africa must go beyond relying on imported medicines and take control of its healthcare manufacturing agenda.
She, therefore, called on industry leaders, innovators, and investors to work together to reduce the continent’s reliance on imported medicines.
“This is a defining moment for Africa to unite our capacities, harness our collective intelligence, and build a self-reliant system that protects the health and prosperity of our people,” she said.
“The reality that African manufacturers produce less than 30 per cent of the medicines consumed on our continent is a wake-up call we cannot afford to ignore,” she added.
Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said for too long, the continent’s health and economic security had been at the mercy of external forces, a situation she described as “unsustainable and unjust”.
“It is a moral challenge when the health and hope of our people are contingent on the goodwill of others,” she added.
The Vice-President reaffirmed that under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama, the government was pursuing an ambitious and transformative agenda to modernise the country’s manufacturing sector, particularly within the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
“We are re-engineering Ghana’s manufacturing sector into a globally competitive powerhouse anchored on value addition, industrial innovation, and regional trade integration,” she said.
“Our goal is to make Ghana a preferred destination for high-quality African products, driving jobs, export revenue, and self-sufficiency across the continent,” she said.
She explained that the country’s policy vision aligned with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose secretariat is in Accra.
“AfCFTA provides a unique opportunity to build integrated regional value chains, reduce dependency on imports, and enable African countries to trade what they make and make what they trade,” she said.
