The US government is throwing its weight behind African production of antiretrovirals as the continent grapples the world’s largest HIV epidemic.

The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program — known as Pepfar — has committed to expand its purchase of ARVs from local suppliers to cover 2 million African patients, said Stavros Nicolaou, the head of strategic trade at Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. 

This is key because it will boost production on the continent and because Pepfar, which then-President George W. Bush initiated in 2003, only got short-term reauthorization in March after months of political debate over its reach. 

The program has saved more than 25 million lives with the more than $110 billion it has provided over the past two decades and allowed at least 5.5 million children to be born free of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

While sub-Saharan Africa carries the bulk of the world’s HIV/AIDS population, less than 1% of the $750 million spent by Pepfar on the disease each year is on products sourced from Africa until now.

“HIV/AIDS still remains one of the most menacing pandemics on the continent,” Nicolaou said in an interview. “In Africa, you’ve got such a disproportionate disease burden that when you also aim to grow the economy inclusively, it becomes a dual need” to make drugs on the continent, he said.

The Covid-19 pandemic kick-started heightened efforts to produce drugs locally after Africa was left at the back of the queue when it came to vaccines and health issues were increasingly linked to global security.

Aspen Pharmacare and Adcock Ingram Holdings Ltd. are among the Johannesburg-traded companies that may benefit from this agreement. Drugmakers in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya that also have US Food and Drug Administration approval may also supply these ARVs.