Ester Mbathera
Africure Pharmaceuticals, owned by businessman Shapwa Kanyama, owned by Shapwa Kanyama (95%) and Trevor Brockerhof (5%),is shifting from packaging generic medicines to manufacturing them locally.
Kanyama, who has been in the medicine supply business, told the Windhoek Observer on Thursday that the move aims to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers and respond to shrinking international funding for essential drugs.
“Covid taught us the lesson that we cannot continue to rely on other nations for our health. We must become self-reliant as a nation. As a country, we are faced with a high unemployment rate, and I want to create employment locally,” he said.
The company will produce solid dosage forms, including tablets and capsules, for pain relief and antiretroviral treatment for HIV.
Kanyama said the goal is also to keep money circulating within the country.
“We are doing this to do value addition within the country and keep the money here,” he said.
He added that Africure will continue sourcing and packaging medicines that cannot yet be produced at the facility.
Joseph Haipinge, the quality control manager at Africure, stated that the company will be able to produce medicine from the start to finish at the plant.
“For now, we are able to manufacture from the first step, from the raw material to blending, through the whole process until our last process of packaging,” he said.
He explained that Africure previously only packaged medicine shipped from other countries, but since 2022, it has gradually moved toward full production.
“We manufacture solid tablets and capsules, not liquids and syrups yet,” Haipinge said.
Africure sources raw materials from international suppliers, but Haipinge said talks are ongoing with Namibian companies to supply packaging materials.
“We are in talks with companies locally, and soon it might become a reality that we will be sourcing some of our materials locally,” he said.
On the sourcing of local medicinal ingredients, Haipinge said: “We are still to get to that stage whereby we source local suppliers like Devil’s Claw. We are yet to get there.”
Africure currently supplies medicine solely to the government.
Kanyama said the company plans to expand to the private sector and neighbouring countries once it secures all the necessary regulatory approvals.
The company is now waiting for its final inspection from the Namibian Medicines Control Council, expected in two months.
