Victor EzejaNigeria has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with Empower School of Health based in Geneva, Switzerland, to establish a regional training hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing in the country.
Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, who made this known in a statement via X on Sunday, said the training institute will be known as Empower Academy Nigeria.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelThe minister explained that the Empower Academy Nigeria institute is designed to “accommodate knowledge transfer in support of the local production of pharmaceutical excipients, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and advanced dosage forms such as inhalers, extended-release medications, and dermatological patches,” and also foster “best practice in process engineering, regulatory compliance, quality control, environmental monitoring, and other important fields.”
According to him, the Empower Nigeria and Empower Group, with the support of world-class facilities and cutting-edge equipment, will have the mandate and capacity to train and upskill up to 2,000 Nigerian professionals annually, and offer certification courses in partnership with Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the International Federation of Pharmacists, among others.
Prof. Pate noted that the initiative would not have been possible without the critical work of the Presidential Initiative on Healthcare Value Chain (PVAC) to unlock the healthcare value chain, undertaken since its establishment by President Bola Tinubu in November 2023.
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He said the PVAC which has the mandate to increase local manufacturing of pharmaceutical products in Nigeria to at least 70 per cent of locally consumed pharmaceutical products and a large section of vaccines by 2030, among others, has attracted several high-value investment commitments in the healthcare sector.
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The minister revealed that under the leadership of President Tinubu, “Nigeria has advanced 22 new large-scale health sector manufacturing projects funded by $5.5 billion in private sector capital.”
He also stated that aside from these investments, the country also recently secured €1 billion from the European Investment Bank (EIB), and an additional $1 billion from Afreximbank to boost efforts in health sector value chain localisation.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
