The African Union executive council voted for Rwanda to host the new African Medicines Agency, or AMA, during its midyear coordination meetings held in Zambia this weekend.
AMA is a specialized health agency of the African Union tasked with improving regulatory harmonization of medicines, including in the area of pharmaceutical manufacturing, in an effort to improve access to quality-assured drugs across the continent.
It is the second cross-continental health agency of the African Union, following the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which is hosted in Ethiopia. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe had also put themselves forward to host AMA.
Thirteen countries had initially expressed interest but did not send in their files by the deadline, Samate Cessouma Minata, commissioner of health, humanitarian affairs, and social development at the AU, said during a press briefing on Friday.
The AU hopes AMA will help the continent reduce dependency on other countries for its health security. Currently, African nations import over 70% of medicines, vaccines, and other health products.
The treaty for AMA was adopted in 2019 by heads of state and the AU, but there has been a long process in getting countries to ratify the treaty. It reached the threshold of 15 countries last October, which allowed the AU to begin the process of operationalization. The treaty has been ratified by 22 countries, which still excludes some large economies on the continent, such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.
Unlike Africa CDC, which came to fruition by a statute of the AU assembly, AMA will not directly serve countries that haven’t ratified it, which is problematic because of porous borders on the continent, which allow poor-quality drugs to move between countries. Because of this, there is an ongoing push to have more countries ratify the treaty. But even so, AMA can also work with a broader range of countries by, for example, working with regional economic communities.
The AU had invited countries to submit proposals to host AMA looking at factors such as security, availability of housing, quality of schooling, health care access and capacity, and ease of travel. A technical team traveled between the countries for two months to assess the suitability of the countries to host the agency based on criteria set by the AU for hosting its institutions in 2007, Minata said.
Peter Kamalingin, Pan Africa director at Oxfam, tweeted in response to the news, urging the AU to fast-track AMA’s operationalization and ensure it is not beholden to wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical companies and countries.
Rwanda has been chosen for a variety of big health initiatives recently. At the end of June, BioNTech broke ground on the construction of a messenger RNA vaccine manufacturing facility in the country. The African Development Bank’s also recently announced that the new African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation will be hosted by Rwanda.
Following the AU’s host country decision, it must now set up AMA’s board, and mobilize resources, Minata said. She noted there is “very good news in terms of financing” but that she could not comment further. The AU will also need to appoint a director general and establish rules for the new agency.