Africa’s health systems are entering a new era of uncertainty. Global geopolitical tensions, disruptions to maritime trade, increasing freight costs, inflationary pressures, export restrictions, changing manufacturing patterns and the progressive fragmentation of global supply chains are increasing the risks associated with the availability and affordability of essential health products. These global pressures are occurring at a particularly difficult moment for African countries. Public health budgets remain constrained, development assistance is becoming less predictable, and national procurement agencies and central medical stores are frequently confronted with acute liquidity constraints. At the same time, many countries continue to face significant weaknesses in demand forecasting, fragmented procurement, insufficient supply-chain visibility and limited capacity to anticipate market disruptions. The result is a paradox.
Countries can simultaneously experience excess stocks of some products and stock-outs of others, while spending scarce resources on emergency procurement and avoidable inventory.
Traditional procurement approaches are increasingly inadequate for this environment. Africa needs to move from reactive procurement to predictive procurement, and from fragmented national purchasing towards strategic aggregation of demand where appropriate. Africa Resource Centre (ARC) proposes the development of an African Procurement Resilience Model, bringing together five complementary capabilities.
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