Building Africa-led health security: From regional dialogue to real delivery

At the Eastern Africa Regional Global Health Security Summit 2026 (EARGHSS 2026), PATH joined governments, regional institutions, industry leaders, civil society, and development partners for a three-day convening to explore how Eastern Africa can move from fragmented national systems and external dependency toward coordinated, Africa-led health security.

Discussions focused on three interconnected priorities: regional collaboration, local manufacturing of health commodities, and sustainable financing. Together, the priorities reflect an increasingly common message across the region: health security is not just about emergency response; it requires strong, long-term systems, economic resilience, and regional sovereignty.

For PATH, the summit built on our ongoing work with the Ministry of Health in Kenya to advance regulatory harmonization and strengthen local pharmaceutical manufacturing. It was encouraging to see these priorities, including Kenya BioVax Institute’s vaccine manufacturing initiative, featured prominently throughout the discussions, demonstrating how country-led work can shape regional agendas.

Health risks in Eastern Africa are increasingly regional. Disease outbreaks, supply chains, and markets cross borders easily, yet preparedness, regulation, and manufacturing remain largely national and uneven. The COVID-19 pandemic made the consequences of this fragmentation impossible to ignore, particularly Africa’s heavy reliance on imported vaccines, diagnostics, and medicines.

The three-day convening focused on local manufacturing, financing, and collaboration strengthening. PATH contributed to a high-level panel on collaboration and institutional reform, sharing lessons from adapting to recent funding and partnership disruptions.

The conversation was candid, with many participants in agreement: Short-term funding cycles and weak institutions leave systems exposed. Building resilience requires durable regional institutions, aligned partnerships, and sustained political commitment before the next crisis hits.

Local manufacturing is now widely recognized as central to both health security and economic growth. Despite strong political commitments, Africa still imports most essential health products, leaving countries vulnerable to global supply shocks and price volatility. Speakers and panelists explored what it will take to change this reality. Key themes included regulatory harmonization, pooled procurement, workforce development, technology transfer, and creation of predictable markets that make manufacturing viable.

PATH contributed to these discussions by emphasizing the importance of evidence-based policy and regional alignment.

PATH also participated in a partners’ side event, convened by the Coalition for Health Research and Development and Africa Health Research Innovation and Development Alliance. The event focused on how the region can move beyond fill-and-finish toward upstream manufacturing, including that of active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The message was clear: Facilities alone are not enough; manufacturing ecosystems matter.

Many of the summit conversations returned to the same question: How do we turn political commitment to local manufacturing into real, investable capacity?

For Kenya, that question is already being answered through the Kenya National Local Health Products Manufacturing Strategy. Developed with support from PATH and partners, the strategy reflects a deliberate shift from aspiration to delivery. It sets a clear and measurable goal—meeting 50 percent of Kenya’s health product needs through domestic production by 2026—while positioning the country to serve as a regional manufacturing hub for East Africa.

Importantly, it does not treat manufacturing as an abstract industrial ambition but as a core pillar of health security.

The development of the local manufacturing strategy has not been a single event. Rather, it is a deliberate journey that has unfolded over the past two years. The summit conversations highlighted how the journey began in Nairobi when the Ministry of Health convened the country’s first-ever local manufacturing expo in October 2023, bringing together industry stakeholders, policymakers, and development partners around a shared ambition to strengthen Kenya’s capacity to produce essential products.

It was during the expo that President William Ruto made a bold commitment that Kenya would produce 50 percent of its essential health products and technologies by 2026. PATH was proud to see President Ruto appointed as the African Union champion for local manufacturing, a recognition of Kenya’s leadership in advancing regional and continental health security.

Following the presidential commitment, the Ministry of Health took an essential next step to undertake a capacity landscape assessment to understand what medicines and health products were already being manufactured locally, a timely and necessary exercise. This provided an evidence base to inform policy decisions, identify gaps and opportunities, and signal credibility for potential investors.

The completion of the capacity landscape assessment laid the groundwork for what would become Kenya’s first-ever local manufacturing strategy. Grounded in data and shaped through broad stakeholder engagement, the strategy presents not only a policy milestone but a firm commitment to building a more resilient health system for Kenya and the larger continent of Africa.

As Kenya translates its strategy into action, regional initiatives like PATH’s Manufacturing to Accelerate Diagnostic Excellence (MADE) in Africa project are bridging similar gaps. Supported by Unitaid, MADE in Africa strengthens the diagnostic manufacturing ecosystem by connecting research and development, local production, regulatory systems, and market access. The initiative addresses the structural barriers that often prevent promising African innovations from reaching scale.

By tackling the full pathway from innovation to production to use, MADE in Africa bridges the gap between ambition and impact. The summit’s discussions highlighted how initiatives like MADE in Africa complement country-led strategies, building resilient, regionally integrated health systems.

Discussions on local manufacturing, sustainable financing, regulatory coordination, and Africa-led health security are converging across the continent. These conversations are informing national strategies while also shaping broader African Union–level policy processes focused on resilience, sovereignty, and regional integration.

For PATH, this momentum reinforces the importance of long-term partnerships. We are proud that the work we support, particularly Kenya’s local manufacturing strategy and Kenya BioVax Institute’s communications strategy, has helped shape these discussions. A clear and strategic approach to communication is essential to Kenya BioVax Insitute’s vaccine manufacturing journey, as it builds trust, aligns stakeholders, counters misinformation, and fosters confidence and demand for locally produced vaccines as the initiative progresses.

Together, this reflects trust in evidence, a commitment to country-led solutions, and the understanding that durable progress depends on sustained collaboration.

Kenya now has a narrow but critical opportunity to translate political momentum into tangible capacity. By locking in demand, aligning incentives with investment, sequencing manufacturing capabilities, and strengthening regional coordination, the country can meet its domestic production goals and help anchor a more resilient East African health ecosystem.

The message emerging from across the region is clear: Africa has the expertise, the institutions, and the ambition. What matters now is delivery, and the choices made today will define health security for decades to come.