Pan-African Parliament Pushes Health Sovereignty as Southern Africa Ministers Meet in Namibia

Pan-African Parliament joins Southern African health ministers in Namibia to advance domestic health financing, insurance, local manufacturing and Africa’s health sovereignty.

WINDHOEK, Namibia — The Pan-African Parliament (PAP) has strengthened its engagement in Africa’s drive for health security and sovereignty, joining Southern African health ministers and senior public health officials in Windhoek for high-level discussions on domestic health financing, universal health coverage and the local manufacture of medicines, vaccines and other essential health products.

The Continental Parliament was represented at the 5th Southern Africa Regional Ministerial Steering Committee (ReSCO) Meeting by a delegation led by Hon. Frank Annoh-Dompreh, Chairperson of the PAP Committee on Health, Labour and Social Affairs. The PAP officially described its participation as reinforcing Parliament’s commitment to health security, health sovereignty and stronger regional cooperation.

The engagement places the parliamentary dimension alongside an increasingly ambitious African Union agenda aimed at reducing the continent’s vulnerability to external health financing and global supply chains while building the institutions, financing and productive capacity necessary for Africa to protect its own population.

Convened by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Southern Africa Regional Coordinating Centre, the meeting brought together Ministers of Health from the Southern African region, ambassadors, senior government officials, public health specialists, representatives of National Health Insurance authorities and National Public Health Institutes, as well as members of Africa CDC regional governance structures.

From Health Dependency to Health Sovereignty

Held under the theme “Strengthening Domestic Financing, Expanding National Health Insurance and Accelerating Local Manufacturing,” the Windhoek meeting confronted a fundamental question facing Africa: how can the continent sustainably protect the health of its people when substantial elements of its health financing, medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and supply chains remain dependent on external actors?

That question has acquired greater urgency following the COVID-19 pandemic and recent changes in international development financing.

Africa CDC estimates that external health aid to Africa has fallen by nearly 70 percent since 2021, while disease outbreaks increased by more than 40 percent between 2022 and 2024. The combination of shrinking external assistance, fragile supply chains, climate-related shocks and recurring outbreaks has prompted a fundamental rethink of how Africa finances and secures its health systems.

Africa CDC's Africa's Health Security and Sovereignty (AHSS) Agenda now seeks to move the continent from dependency towards greater ownership and resilience.

The agenda is built around five interconnected pillars: reforming the global health architecture to give Africa greater influence; institutionalizing pandemic prevention, preparedness and response; securing predictable domestic and innovative financing; strengthening digital transformation and data sovereignty; and expanding local manufacturing of essential health products.

The Windhoek discussions therefore form part of a much wider continental transformation.

Health Threats Do Not Respect Borders

A central message emerging from the meeting was that health security cannot be achieved by countries acting in isolation.

Epidemics do not recognize national frontiers. An outbreak that begins within one country can quickly threaten neighbouring states and, as COVID-19 demonstrated, spread across continents.

Southern Africa's health security consequently depends not simply on the strength of individual national systems, but also on the ability of countries to cooperate in surveillance, laboratory testing, early warning, emergency preparedness, information-sharing and coordinated cross-border responses.

Participants stressed the need for investments capable of identifying threats early and containing them before they develop into wider humanitarian and economic emergencies.

This regional approach is consistent with Africa CDC's continental strategy, which calls for an institutionalized pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system integrating surveillance, laboratories, National Public Health Institutes, Public Health Emergency Operations Centres and emergency workforces.

The lesson from recent health emergencies is increasingly difficult to ignore: the health security of one African country is inseparable from the health security of its neighbours.

Domestic Financing Becomes a Strategic Imperative

But preparedness requires sustainable financing.

This emerged as another central concern in Windhoek as ministers and other participants examined ways of increasing domestic resource mobilization, improving the efficiency of national health expenditure, introducing innovative financing and expanding National Health Insurance systems.

The scale of the financing challenge is substantial.

According to Africa CDC's 2026 Health Financing Reform Handbook for African Union Member States, Africa carries approximately 22 percent of the global burden of disease but accounts for only about one percent of global health expenditure.

Average health expenditure on the continent stands at approximately US$85 per person. Government resources account for around 35 percent of total health expenditure, external assistance approximately 23 percent, and out-of-pocket expenditure another 35 percent. In many lower-income countries, out-of-pocket payments account for between 40 and 60 percent of health expenditure. Africa CDC estimates that such expenditure pushes around 15 million Africans into poverty every year.

Development assistance for health has also declined substantially from its COVID-era peak. Africa CDC reports that it fell from approximately US$25.8 billion in 2021 to around US$13 billion in 2025.

These trends strengthen the argument that domestic financing is no longer simply a health-sector policy preference. It is becoming a question of continental resilience and sovereignty.

National Health Insurance and Universal Access

The emphasis on expanding National Health Insurance systems is equally significant.

Greater domestic financing will have limited social impact unless it improves ordinary citizens' access to healthcare and reduces the financial burden associated with illness.

National insurance and other risk-pooling mechanisms can help move health financing away from direct payments by patients towards systems in which risks and costs are shared across populations.

For African governments, the challenge is therefore twofold: mobilizing more sustainable resources for healthcare while ensuring that those resources translate into accessible, equitable and affordable services.

The Windhoek meeting placed these objectives within the wider concept of health sovereignty: recognizing that sovereignty ultimately means little if citizens cannot obtain essential healthcare without being pushed into poverty.

Africa's Local Manufacturing Challenge

Alongside financing, local manufacturing occupied a prominent place in the deliberations.

COVID-19 dramatically exposed Africa's dependence on health products manufactured elsewhere. Disruptions to international supply chains and unequal access to vaccines demonstrated the strategic risks faced by a continent without sufficient domestic production capacity.

Africa CDC has reported that, as recently as 2025, only about one percent of Africa's vaccine requirements was being produced on the continent.

The African Union has consequently set an ambitious goal of ensuring that at least 60 percent of essential medical countermeasures are produced in Africa by 2040. The objective covers vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics and forms a central component of the Health Security and Sovereignty Agenda.

In February 2026, African leaders reinforced this commitment through a Presidential Declaration recognizing local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, diagnostics and medical devices as a strategic pillar of Africa's health security and sovereignty.

Achieving that ambition, however, requires much more than constructing factories.

It demands investment across an entire ecosystem encompassing pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, research and development, clinical trials, technology transfer, regulatory institutions, scientific expertise, skilled personnel, sustainable procurement and reliable markets for African-made products.

Manufacturing Must Be Matched by African Procurement

One of the critical challenges facing African pharmaceutical production is ensuring that manufacturers have sufficiently predictable markets to become commercially sustainable.

That has made the African Pooled Procurement Mechanism (APPM) an important component of the continental strategy.

By aggregating demand across countries, coordinating procurement and creating larger and more predictable markets, the mechanism is intended simultaneously to improve access to essential health products and support African manufacturers.

African leaders in February 2026 called for full operationalization of the APPM as a strategic “Buy African” mechanism, supported by demand aggregation, market-shaping and longer-term purchasing arrangements.

The implication is significant: Africa cannot sustainably manufacture its own health products unless African institutions and countries also create viable markets for those products.

Health sovereignty therefore requires the alignment of industrial policy, public health policy, procurement, financing and trade.

From Consumer to Contributor in Global Health Innovation

The broader ambition extends beyond reducing imports.

Africa's health sovereignty agenda envisages a continent capable of becoming a significant contributor to medical research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical innovation and global health solutions.

This requires building African scientific and technological capabilities from research and development through clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution.

Progress is already emerging. In May 2026, for example, Africa CDC welcomed the mobilization of US$180 million to expand Biovac's multi-vaccine manufacturing facility in South Africa, including investment in technology transfer, production scale-up and working capital.

But individual investments will need to be supported by continental markets, harmonized regulation, skilled workforces and sustained political commitment if Africa's manufacturing ambitions are to become commercially viable.

Health Security Is Also a Peace and Development Issue

The Windhoek meeting also highlighted an important relationship that is sometimes overlooked: the connection between health, peace and political stability.

Strong health systems are difficult to build and sustain in environments characterized by conflict, displacement, political instability and destruction of infrastructure.

At the same time, weak health systems can aggravate social and economic vulnerability. Disease outbreaks can disrupt education and commerce, increase poverty, strain public finances and weaken citizens' confidence in public institutions.

Health security must therefore be regarded as part of Africa's broader peace, security and sustainable development agenda rather than as an isolated sectoral concern.

The economic consequences of COVID-19 provided perhaps the clearest demonstration that a health emergency can rapidly become an economic, social, educational, political and security crisis.

Investing in resilient health systems is consequently also an investment in national stability and sustainable development.

Why the Pan-African Parliament Matters

It is against this background that the participation of the Pan-African Parliament takes on particular significance.

PAP's Committee on Health, Labour and Social Affairs is mandated to engage with issues affecting health and social development across the continent, and the Parliament's current committee leadership identifies Hon. Frank Annoh-Dompreh as its Chairperson.

But Parliament's potential contribution extends beyond participation in ministerial meetings.

The shift towards health sovereignty ultimately requires laws, budgets, oversight and political accountability, precisely the areas where parliaments have critical responsibilities.

National legislatures determine appropriations for health services, scrutinize government expenditure, enact regulatory frameworks, oversee National Health Insurance schemes and can create enabling environments for pharmaceutical manufacturing, research and biotechnology.

PAP can help connect continental health priorities with those national legislative processes by mobilizing parliamentarians, encouraging harmonization and keeping implementation of AU commitments under political scrutiny.

The Windhoek engagement therefore reflects an increasingly important principle: Africa's health sovereignty cannot be delivered by health ministries and public health institutions alone. Parliamentarians must also be part of the process.

Turning Health Sovereignty from Aspiration into Reality

Africa CDC Director-General Dr. Jean Kaseya has described health sovereignty as a transition from dependency to ownership and from vulnerability to resilience, while stressing that sovereignty does not mean isolation but rather African leadership of partnerships built around African-defined priorities.

That distinction is important.

Africa's pursuit of health sovereignty is not a call to disengage from international cooperation. Global health challenges require international partnerships.

Rather, it is an argument that Africa should participate in those partnerships from a position of greater capacity, able to finance a larger share of its priorities, manufacture more of the products its people need, generate and control its health data, develop scientific expertise and respond effectively when emergencies occur.

The 5th Southern Africa ReSCO Meeting in Windhoek adds regional momentum to that continental objective.

For the Pan-African Parliament, its participation also signals an opportunity to transform Africa's health sovereignty agenda from declarations and technical strategies into legislation, budgets, parliamentary oversight and national implementation.

Ultimately, the measure of success will not be the number of strategies adopted or conferences convened. It will be whether an outbreak can be detected before it spreads; whether African countries can mobilize their own resources to respond; whether essential medicines and vaccines are available when they are needed; and whether Africans can access quality healthcare without being driven into poverty.

That is the practical meaning of African health security and sovereignty.