The National Vaccine Institute (NVI) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) will convene a two‑day regional meeting in Accra on November 10 and 11, 2026. The event aims to bring together manufacturers, regulators, health and procurement officials, and regional bodies to move the African Pooled Procurement Mechanism (APPM) toward a fully operational continental market.
In a press statement, NVI said the workshop will focus on the practical arrangements needed to operationalise the APPM. Discussions will cover country enrolment, the APPM Supply Catalogue, technical specifications, demand aggregation and forecasting, quality assurance and regulatory requirements, tendering status, and financing and implementation timelines.
The meeting is expected to draw roughly 70 participants, about 40 of them Member State and regional delegates. The APPM, established by Africa CDC under African Union decisions, aggregates demand across Member States to strengthen purchasing power, improve access to affordable quality‑assured products, and create a more predictable market for African manufacturers.
Its first tender, announced in May 2026, covered ten priority reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) medicines across ten Member States and secured an average of 45% savings below Member State benchmarks, with African manufacturers featuring in five of the ten products. The mechanism is central to the African Union’s ambition of meeting 60% of the continent’s health product needs from local production by 2040.
Ghana signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Africa CDC on August 21, 2026, to participate in the APPM, advancing the Government’s commitment to prioritise locally produced vaccines and pharmaceuticals and to support Ghanaian manufacturers in accessing regional markets. Participation gives qualified Ghanaian manufacturers a pathway beyond the domestic market of some 33 million people into a continental market of approximately 1.4 billion, and complements Ghana’s work to establish more predictable domestic demand through an Advance Purchase Commitment mechanism and other market‑shaping interventions.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, NVI CEO Dr. Sodzi Sodzi‑Tettey said the meeting presents exciting opportunities for local and continental manufacturers. “Just a year ago, access to a continental market seemed like a distant dream. Today, not only is Ghana a member of the APPM, a few products are reaching millions in Africa. With this meeting, we expand the opportunity to all pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturers in Ghana and West Africa. It is an opportunity to scale for impact,” he said.
The workshop is supported by PharmaVax Ghana, a programme co‑financed by the European Union (EU) and German Development Cooperation (BMZ) and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Participants will seek to build a common understanding of the APPM operational model, agree on demand aggregation and prioritisation, clarify supplier participation and regulatory requirements, and agree on procurement, financing and implementation arrangements, including a time‑bound roadmap for operationalising the APPM in Ghana and supporting regional market access for priority health products.
What to watch next: The outcomes of the Accra workshop will determine how quickly the APPM can be rolled out across member states and how Ghanaian manufacturers can tap into the expanding continental market.
