Broken Supply Chains and Local Manufacturing Innovation: Responses to Covid-19 and Their Implications for Policy

Abstract

The immense scale of the pandemic healthcare supply crisis across Sub-Saharan Africa showed that a stronger industrial base allowed India, and some African countries, to better tackle crucial supply gaps. Governments have been forced by Covid-19 into developing new “socio-technical imaginaries”: shared visions of what is possible and important for local health security. The pandemic confirmed widespread pre-pandemic African predictions that in a major crisis, African countries would find themselves at the back of the queue; that truth is driving a new recognition of industrialisation’s role in building local health security, including the huge challenge of cancer care in Africa.