China's plan to expand the pharmaceutical industry along the “Silk Road of Health”- the trade and investment routes created by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)- took a step forward on Monday when Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical announced that the first phase of its new manufacturing plant in Ivory Coast will be completed by the end of this year
[China, Africa] The Fosun Pharma plant is under construction in Abidjan, the largest city in the Ivory Coast, and is expected to produce some 5 billion tablets of anti-malarial drugs and antibiotics per year once all three construction phases are complete. The demand for such drugs in Africa is immense, with almost 95 percent of worldwide malaria cases emanating from the sub-Saharan region.
Côte d'Ivoire, located on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, has earned a renowned reputation throughout the African continent for its outstanding achievements in economic development. Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d'Ivoire, is known as the “Paris of West Africa” for its unique charm.
Fosun Pharma's Côte d'Ivoire park project launched in November 2022. Guilin Pharma, a company owned by Fosun Pharma, responded to the Belt and Road Initiative by launching the Ivory Coast Pharmaceutical Park project in the Grand Bassam area of Abidjan.
In 2023, the International Finance Corporation (IFC—a member of the World Bank Group—is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets) and Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd. established a partnership. Under the partnership, IFC will provide Fosun Pharma subsidiaries with two loans totaling 50 million euros to support the construction of a manufacturing site near Abidjan for the production of antimalarial and antibacterial drugs, which is Fosun Pharma's park project in Côte d'Ivoire.
IFC announced a partnership with the Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd. to help the company build a pharmaceuticals production facility and distribution hub in Côte d'Ivoire. Abidjan June 5, 2023 - Credit IFC
The project is planned to be built in three phases, with the first phase expected to be completed in 2024.
The first phase of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical’s manufacturing facility near Abidjan, Ivory Coast is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Photo: Fosun Pharmaceutical
“President Xi Jinping promised during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit last month that Beijing would promote pharmaceutical production and the medical equipment industry in Africa, including access to active pharmaceutical ingredients, through co-investment by Chinese and African private sector players,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted on Monday.
China has been touting the “Health Silk Road” concept since the height of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, leading to some gallows humor about the Chinese seeking to profit from the high demand for vaccines to combat a pandemic of a disease first documented in their country.
The “Silk Road of Health” has caught on as a nickname for Xi's plans to expand China's pharmaceutical industry to developing countries along the path laid out by those infrastructure projects.
The Health Silk Road was supposed to begin in Italy, the only European nation to join BRI, but China’s vaccines for coronavirus were disappointing and Italy later withdrew from Belt and Road. The Health Silk Road’s best prospects now lie in Africa, where China’s anti-malarial medicines have been much more successful than its coronavirus vaccines were, the Breibart noted.
Zambia joined the Health Silk Road last week by signing a deal with the Jijia International Medical Technology Corp. of China to build Africa’s first cholera vaccine factory. Nigeria is also working with China to build a pharmaceutical plant in the Lekki free-trade zone of Lagos, with an emphasis on producing HIV medications.
Nigeria once supplied much of Africa with pharmaceuticals manufactured by Western giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Sanofi, a company specializing in polio vaccines.
GSK and Sanofi announced in August 2023 they would suspend their activities in Nigeria due to “operational difficulties,” particularly those caused by the Nigerian government’s decision to eliminate fixed prices for foreign currency trading to slow the collapse of Nigeria’s currency, the naira.
GSK said the exchange rate was a major reason it could no longer operate in Nigeria without suffering heavy losses, along with rising energy and operational costs. Both companies pledged to work with third-party distributors to guarantee the flow of medicine in Nigeria, but now China is stepping in to fill the production gap.
George Washington University China-Africa specialist David Shinn told the SCMP that overcapacity in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry could be a major driver of growth for the Health Silk Road. To put it bluntly, China will soon be making more medicine than it really needs, thanks to population decline.
“As China’s population decreases, domestic overcapacity will become a growing issue in a variety of industries. Africa is the fastest growing continent in the world and an obvious location for increased pharmaceutical production,” said Shinn.
Another perk of the Health Silk Road is that even with the high costs and production difficulties cited by GSK, Chinese pharmaceutical firms might be able to turn a better profit in Africa because they run on very thin margins in China.
Joseph Wangendo, senior technical officer at the Africa Centers for Disease Control (Africa CDC), on Thursday praised China for making health investments in Africa.
“Over the years, China has consistently demonstrated its commitment to Africa’s health security, most notably through the construction of the Africa CDC headquarters, which stands as a testament to the strength of Africa-China relations,” Wangendo said at a high-level China-Africa development forum.
Wangendo pointed to the mpox outbreak in parts of Africa and the Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda as examples of challenges that China could help Africa meet.
“We are immensely grateful for the technical support and resources that China has provided, and we look forward to working altogether to strengthen Africa’s preparedness and response capabilities,” he said.
Other African leaders at the forum said China has built hospitals and donated medical equipment to countries like Ethiopia and has helped African nations upgrade their “disease surveillance” capabilities.
The Silk Road of Health
In autumn 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). With the actualisation of the BRI, not only have new drivers for global
economic growth been created, but the scope for strengthening economic and
cultural exchanges and co-operation between China and its BRI partner countries has also broadened. Within the BRI, the medical and health industry is an important field with a great potential for international co-operation.
In 2016, Xi Jinping in formally proposed to joint contribute Health Silk Road when visited Uzbekistan. 2017, China signed a memorandum with the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote co-operation among BRI partner countries and other key partners to build the Health Silk Road. During the critical period in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Xi Jinping once again stressed the necessity to build the Health Silk Road. The President also proposed the initiative to ‘build a global community of health for all’, which would play a leading role in strengthening global co-operation against the pandemic. In 2021, The third symposium on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) took joint construction of the Health Silk Road as an important aspect of the future high-quality joint construction.
According to The Outline of the 14th Five- Year Plan (2021–2025) for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 (‘the 14th Five-Year Plan’ or ‘the Plan’), China will actively co-operate with BRI partner countries in the medical and health sector as well as infectious disease prevention and control so as to build the Health Silk Road. The Plan also proposes
clear steps to develop strategic emerging industries such as biotechnology, new materials and new energy vehicles. It also suggests to dedicate top-of-the-line resources to develop key core technologies related to: emerging infectious diseases; biosafety risk prevention and control; and medicine and medical equipment. With this, the country aims to make its bio-economy bigger and stronger. This will further promote the quality development of the domestic medical and health industry, lay a foundation for its integration into the domestic and international Dual Circulation pattern and, in turn, bolster the development of the Health Silk Road
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