Heads of state are arriving in Addis Ababa for the 2026 African Union Summit, with a water-focused theme centred on climate change. Conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo and the Sahel loom, while Israel’s recognition of Somaliland adds pressure over borders.
Nigeria has canvassed a continental shift towards health security sovereignty in Africa aimed at moving the continent from reliance on foreign aids to self-sufficient and homegrown health systems.
This, according to Vice President Kashim Shettima, has become a matter of necessity to ensure the health of Africans is not subjected to the uncertainties of distant supply chains or the shifting priorities of global panic.
Shettima made the submission yesterday during a high-level side event on ‘Building Africa’s Health Security Sovereignty’, on the margins of the ongoing 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Africa health security and sovereignty initiative is a collaboration between the Nigerian government and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, to mobilise investment in the health workforce, community health and sustainable immunisation programmes.
The Vice President, who is representing President Bola Tinubu at this year’s AU Summit, reaffirmed Nigeria’s readiness to partner with other African nations to build a continent that is capable of healing itself.
“Nigeria stands ready to collaborate with every member state of our Union to make health security sovereignty measurable in factories commissioned, laboratories accredited, health workers trained, counterfeit markets dismantled, and insurance coverage expanded.
“When history reflects on this generation of African leadership, may it record that when confronted with vulnerability, we chose capacity; when confronted with dependence, we chose dignity; and when confronted with uncertainty, we chose cooperation. And in choosing cooperation, we built a continent that could heal itself,” he declared.
Shettima cautioned against the consequences of vulnerability, recalling that during global health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic when the world turned inward, Africa waited, improvised and negotiated for rationed vaccines and scarce oxygen.
Acknowledging that there is dignity in endurance, the Vice President noted, however, that endurance is not a strategy, as “leadership is measured not by how long vulnerability can be withstood, “but by how deliberately we reduce it.
“Health security is national security, and in an interconnected continent, national security is continental security. A virus, as we have witnessed, does not carry a passport. A counterfeit medicine does not respect a border. A pandemic does not wait for bureaucracy,” he stated.
Shettima outlined measures being adopted by Nigeria to tackle health challenges, saying the nation is currently treating health matters with every seriousness under the leadership of President Tinubu.
He pointed out that the nation is focusing on boosting local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, increasing domestic health financing, and strengthening regulatory oversight through various initiatives such as the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative and Presidential Initiative to Unlock the Healthcare Value Chain (PIPUHVAC).
According to him, “Nigeria has approached this challenge with seriousness under the leadership of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In December 2023, we launched the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, securing over 2.2 billion dollars in health-sector commitments anchored in measurable outcomes.
“The initiative set out to renovate and revitalise more than 17,000 primary health care centres across our federation, to train 120,000 frontline health workers, and to expand health insurance coverage within three years through reforms driven by the National Health Insurance Authority. We prioritise this because we believe that sovereignty must rest on financial protection as much as on infrastructure.”
The Vice President attributed Nigeria’s success in responding swiftly to disease outbreaks that had overwhelmed the world to strengthen epidemic intelligence and emergency preparedness.
He said because time is currency in public health, the country is enhancing laboratory networks, expanding genomic surveillance, and reinforcing coordination at its emergency operations centres through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
Noting that sovereignty without standards amounts to exposure to risk, Shettima said Nigeria has intensified regulatory oversight under the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
He revealed that the nation is “upgrading quality-control laboratories, tightening enforcement against substandard and falsified medicines, and streamlining processes for compliant manufacturers.”
Beyond public systems, the Vice President stated that the nation is unlocking its healthcare value chain through the establishment of the presidential initiative to unlock the Healthcare Value Chain.
The target, he explained, “is to remove structural bottlenecks facing domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device assemblers, and biotechnology innovators,” adding that the goal is “to catalyse investment in local drug manufacturing, diagnostics production, and biotechnology research.”
Shettima called for more private sector participation, insisting that it “is not an accessory to Africa’s health sovereignty agenda” but central to it, as governments cannot build the future of health sovereignty alone.
Earlier in his remarks, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, thanked the CDC and AUC for their partnership with Nigeria to strengthen Africa’s health security and sovereignty, which he said will help build resilience across the continent in readiness for emergency situations.
He stated that Nigeria under President Tinubu is committed to leading by example by boosting capacity building initiatives for the health workforce in Nigeria and beyond and turning ambition into reality.
Pate spoke about several initiatives of the Nigerian government aimed at building a reliable health workforce database, boosting the workforce capabilities to handle complex situations, all in the bid to assist stakeholders bridge gaps in the rural-urban divide in the distribution of health workers across Nigeria.
In setting the scene for conversations at the event, Director General of the Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Jean Kaseya, highlighted the trend in the distribution of health workforce across Africa.
He commended Nigeria’s leadership in the area through healthcare reforms especially in building resilience and boosting immunization programmes.
Kaseya said at a time when Africa was facing shortage of skilled health workforce and fragile community health system, investments across the continent remain fragmented and insufficient to address the issues, just as he urged synergy of resources and efforts within the region to reverse the negative trend.
In separate remarks, Ministers of Health of the Republic of Senegal, Dr. Ibrahim Sy; Republic of Malawi, Madalisto Baloyi; and the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, Dr. Mekdes Daba, were unanimous in their alignment and support for the programme.
They pledged the commitment of their various countries to synergising efforts and internalising new initiatives aimed at boosting investment in building workforce databases in the health sector as well as strengthening health systems at the community levels.
Goodwill messages in support of the initiative aimed at strengthening the health workforce and community health systems across Africa were also presented by the representatives of AUC, GAVI and UNICEF, among other partners.
In a communique presented at the end of the forum by Pate, the Ministers of Health and Finance of African Union Member States called upon African Union Heads of State and Government, Member States, and development partners to strengthen political commitment and increase sustained investment in Human Resources for Health and Community Health Systems.
Specifically, the ministers urged political leaders to elevate Human Resources for Health (HRH) and Community Health Workers (CHWs) as strategic pillars of Primary Health Care (PHC), Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR).
They also want leaders to accelerate progress toward the continental target of two million community health workers by 2030; increase and sustain domestic financing for the health workforce and community health systems; develop and finance continental and national community health acceleration plans.
