As Africa strives to recover economically from the heavy impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, health authorities and national experts are turning to international cooperation to strengthen epidemic prevention mechanisms, strategies to combat contagious diseases, and research and innovation. It was against this backdrop that a European Union mission visited Addis Ababa from 05 to 07 February 2024 to discuss ways of strengthening cooperation in the field of health.
Africa is home to the world’s youngest population, with around one million Africans entering the labour market every month, according to World Bank estimates.However, less than half of Africa’s citizens – some 615 million people – have access to the healthcare they need. Only 3% of pharmaceutical products are manufactured on the African continent, despite the fact that Africa bears 24% of the world’s mortality burden and represents 11% of the world’s population. While real progress has been made in tackling the burden of disease in the WHO African Region, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the link between health, the economy and security, as the region has seen decades of progress threatened. Hence the importance of investment in this key sector for Africa’s development, which has already mobilised €1.3 billion since Covid-19.
“Health is the Agenda of development, peace and security, economic growth, job creation and health security. I think that with Covid-19 we understood that without a strong health agenda in terms of strong collaboration with our key partners knowing the EU is our key partner, we are not moving forward. Partners can even come with billions of dollars but if those are not aligned to our vision, to our strategy, we are going nowhere.”
Jean Kaseya, Director General,Africa CDC – RD Congo
In fact, the right to health was one of the main concerns of the 6th European Union-African Union Summit in Brussels in 2022. Investment in people has become an essential pillar of cooperation between the EU and Africa, with priority given to combating inequalities and ensuring access to quality healthcare.
“Already at the AU summit in February 2022, the African Union and the European Union committed jointly to African health sovereignty and to respond to future health crises. These are goals we have shaped together with our African partners.”
Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety – Cyprus
Another priority of this cooperation should be to improve healthcare and strengthen national health systems, to make them more resilient to future crises. From 05 to 07 February 2024, a mission from the European Commission visited Addis Ababa to discuss strategies for strengthening cooperation between the African Union and the European Union in the field of health research and innovation in order to stimulate local production of equipment and medicines.
“Europe is safe when Africa is safe, Europe can only be healthy when Africa is healthy and health is the precondition to social progress and therefore stability.”
Caroline Gennez, Minister of Development Cooperation and Major Cities – Belgium
In the context of the new public health order for Africa, investments under the Team Europe Initiative on manufacturing and access to vaccines, medicines and health technologies in Africa can help strengthen Africa CDC’s core and technical capacities to reinforce the continental health security architecture using a One Health approach; intensify sequencing-based surveillance and strengthen the capacities of the public health laboratory network for epidemic detection and response.