Healthcare innovation is advancing rapidly across Africa, but ensuring that new medicines, diagnostics and emerging technologies translate into timely and equitable patient access remains a complex challenge.
Ahead of AfriSummit 2026, we spoke with David Gibbons, Country President, African Cluster at AstraZeneca, about the gap between innovation and access, the role of regulatory collaboration and harmonisation, and why stronger alignment across regulation, financing and healthcare delivery will be essential to helping new solutions reach patients more effectively.
Question 1: Where do you see the biggest gap today between healthcare innovation and patient access in Africa?
The biggest gap is not a lack of innovation, it is the ability to translate innovation into equitable, timely and sustainable access for patients.
Across Africa, promising medicines, diagnostics and AI solutions are being developed, but patients may still face delays because of limited diagnostic capacity, fragmented referral pathways, constrained healthcare infrastructure, affordability challenges and differences in regulatory and reimbursement systems.
Addressing this gap requires a whole-health-system approach. Innovation needs to be supported by strong primary healthcare, trained healthcare professionals, reliable supply chains, appropriate financing and policies that reflect local health priorities.
At AstraZeneca, we believe that improving access requires strong partnership with key stakeholders including governments, regulators, healthcare professionals, patient organisations and local communities.
Question 2: What regulatory or policy changes could help new healthcare solutions reach patients faster?
Regulatory systems must continue to evolve to be more agile, efficient, and predictable, while maintaining the highest standards of quality, safety, and efficacy. The goal should be to accelerate patient access without compromising public trust in the regulatory process.
A key opportunity lies in strengthening regulatory collaboration across Africa. Greater adoption of reliance and recognition pathways, increased convergence of technical requirements, enhanced information sharing between regulatory authorities, and continued support for regional harmonisation initiatives can help reduce duplication, optimise scarce resources, and shorten approval timelines.
Building on the progress of the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) programme and supporting the successful operationalisation of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) will be critical to achieving a more integrated and efficient African regulatory ecosystem. AMA has the potential to serve as a catalyst for regulatory convergence, reliance, work-sharing, and capacity strengthening across the continent, helping to reduce duplication, improve predictability, and accelerate access to high-quality, safe, and effective healthcare solutions for patients. This emphasis on AMA’s role in enabling reliance, coordination, and regulatory strengthening is consistent with broader discussions on advancing regulatory harmonisation across Africa.
At the same time, regulatory frameworks must keep pace with scientific and technological advances. This includes creating clear and fit-for-purpose pathways for innovative medicines, diagnostics, digital health solutions, artificial intelligence, and the use of real-world evidence. Strengthening regulatory capacity and capability across the continent will be essential to ensuring that regulatory decision-making remains responsive to innovation while reflecting the needs and realities of African populations.
Policies must support the entire healthcare innovation pathway, including timely diagnosis, sustainable reimbursement and procurement models, healthcare system readiness, workforce capability, and resilient supply chains. Greater alignment between regulatory, health technology assessment, financing, and healthcare delivery systems can help ensure that innovations reach patients more quickly after approval.
Ultimately, the most impactful change would be a coordinated, patient-centred approach that combines regulatory innovation, regional collaboration, and health system strengthening. The long-term vision should be a regulatory environment in which AMA, working alongside National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs), helps facilitate greater collaboration, reliance, and regulatory excellence across Africa, enabling faster and more equitable patient access to innovation. By addressing these interconnected elements together, African countries can accelerate access to life-changing healthcare solutions while maintaining robust standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness.
Question 3: What value do forums like AfriSummit bring by bringing regulators, policymakers and industry together in one place?
They create an important opportunity for stakeholders to move from discussion to practical collaboration.
Bringing regulators, policymakers and industry together help build a shared understanding of the challenges affecting access across different markets. It enables participants to exchange experience, identify opportunities for greater alignment and discuss how regulatory and policy frameworks can support innovation while protecting patients.
These forums are particularly valuable for AstraZeneca because access challenges are interconnected, they cannot be addressed in isolation. Progress requires collaboration between the public and private sectors, as well as meaningful engagement with healthcare professionals and patients.
AfriSummit also provides a platform to consider solutions that are relevant to Africa’s diverse healthcare systems and priorities. By bringing all of these stakeholders together, the forum can help support more resilient health systems and ensure that scientific advances translate into safe, quality-assured and more equitable care for patients across the continent.
Closing the gap between healthcare innovation and patient access will require more than scientific progress alone. Strong regulatory systems, health-system readiness, sustainable financing, resilient supply chains and collaboration across the public and private sectors all have a role to play.
As David Gibbons highlights, greater coordination between regulators, policymakers, industry, healthcare professionals and patients can help create an environment where innovation is matched by the systems needed to deliver it safely, efficiently and equitably.
These conversations will continue at AfriSummit 2026, bringing stakeholders from across the regulatory and healthcare ecosystem together to explore practical pathways for improving access and strengthening healthcare systems across Africa.