President John Dramani Mahama has called for the removal of regulatory and financial barriers that continue to hinder the development of integrated health and pharmaceutical value chains across Africa.

According to President Mahama, Africa’s health transformation cannot be achieved through isolated national interventions but requires countries to coordinate their markets, regulations, investment frameworks and industrial capacities.

He said the continent must create an environment in which health products can move efficiently across borders and manufacturers can access markets beyond their home countries.

“To turn these isolated successes into a continental ecosystem, we must eliminate regulatory and financial friction,” President Mahama said.

He argued that the African Continental Free Trade Area provided an important framework for creating a larger market for African pharmaceutical manufacturers and encouraging investment in production capacity.

The President said Ghana was deploying dedicated task forces and a Reform Interlock Observatory through the Accra Reset Presidential Council to monitor capital flows, enforce policy commitments and identify non-tariff barriers affecting regional value chains.

He said such mechanisms were necessary to ensure that political commitments translated into practical opportunities for businesses and investors.

President Mahama also challenged African regulators to accelerate the operationalisation of the African Medicines Agency.

“How quickly can we operationalise the African Medicines Agency to ensure a single drug approval opens the doors to all 54 AU member states?” he asked.

He said regulatory harmonisation would be critical to creating a truly integrated continental pharmaceutical market and attracting the scale of investment required to build competitive African industries.