Leaders and people responsible for defining Africa’s policies and action plans for medicines access and development will be at the meeting of expert on Pharmaceutical Innovation in Africa. The meeting has two components:

• An extended meeting of experts of the Technical Committee on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa.
• Followed by a consultation of African policy makers to review the experts’ findings and discuss strategies for medicines access and local production for the continent.

The experts will review the study “Strengthening pharmaceutical innovation in Africa”, and prepare comments and recommendations to feed into the policy-level consultation, including recommendations for Africa decision makers on approaches to put the Plan into action in their countries.

African policy makers will be by joined in the consultation by directors or members of several global health organisations and programmes, including UNAIDS and WHO.

Participants include several African ministers of health and science and technology; African government officials and researchers from some 20 countries; regulatory authorities; the pharmaceutical industry (largely from Africa); members of public private partnerships involved in medicines access and development; and senior representatives of global health actors such as WHO, UNAIDs and others.