‘Nigeria risks losing healthcare manufacturing gains without structured funding’

Nigeria must move urgently to institutionalise dedicated, long-term healthcare funding if it is to sustain its emerging healthcare industrial boom and secure its ambition of becoming a regional manufacturing hub. This call was made by Prof. Lere Baale, Professor of Pharmacy and a leading voice in healthcare policy, at the Codix Group Dinner themed “Sustaining Nigeria’s Healthcare Industrial Boom: The Need for Dedicated Healthcare Funding.”

Delivering the keynote address, Prof. Baale described Nigeria’s current healthcare transformation as a historic yet fragile moment—one that could easily falter without deliberate and enduring financial architecture. According to him, the country is witnessing nothing short of an industrial awakening in healthcare, marked by a decisive shift from import dependence to local capability and value creation. “Nigeria is experiencing a healthcare industrial awakening—a shift from dependency to capability, from imports to local value creation. The boom is real. However, there is a call for us to sustain it,” he said.

Prof. Baale noted that in recent years, Nigeria’s healthcare and pharmaceutical ecosystem has undergone a quiet but profound transformation. Indigenous pharmaceutical manufacturers are expanding production capacity, diagnostic firms are investing in local assembly and innovation, and regulatory confidence is steadily improving. Skilled professionals who once sought opportunities abroad are beginning to return, while regional and international partnerships are deepening across the value chain.

He attributed this progress to a convergence of necessity and leadership. The COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chain disruptions, foreign exchange volatility, and rising import costs, he argued, exposed the vulnerabilities of overdependence on external suppliers. In response, regulators and policymakers have become more intentional in aligning healthcare regulation with national industrial priorities. “What we are witnessing is not just growth; it is industrial possibility—the emergence of healthcare as a strategic pillar of national development,” Prof. Baale said.

Despite these gains, he warned that the absence of structured, long-term, affordable healthcare-specific financing poses a serious threat to the sector’s sustainability. Healthcare manufacturing, he explained, is fundamentally different from conventional trading activity. It is capital-intensive, characterised by long gestation periods, heavy upfront investment, stringent regulatory requirements, advanced technology needs, and reliance on highly skilled human capital.

Yet, he lamented, it is often financed with short-term, high-cost capital that is ill-suited to the realities of the industry. “A healthcare industrial boom without dedicated funding is like a factory without power—it may exist, but it cannot operate optimally,” he stated.

According to Prof. Baale, dedicated healthcare funding is not merely desirable but a strategic necessity. Properly structured financing, he said, would stabilise supply chains, improve product quality and regulatory compliance, create high-value jobs, protect national health security, and position Nigeria as an attractive destination for global healthcare investment. He emphasised that medicines, diagnostics, and medical consumables should be treated as strategic national assets rather than ordinary commodities, given their centrality to public health, productivity, and national resilience.

To translate this vision into action, Prof. Baale outlined a comprehensive seven-point framework aimed at institutionalising sustainable healthcare financing in Nigeria. Central to the proposal is a call to increase the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) from the current one per cent to three per cent of consolidated government revenue. He argued that such an increase would better reflect the strategic importance of healthcare to national productivity, economic growth, and security. He further proposed that the expanded BHCPF be strategically domiciled with the Bank of Industry (BOI), working in close coordination with the Federal Ministry of Health. This structure, he said, should be supported by well-designed Medipool arrangements at state and local government levels to ensure efficient, transparent, and timely disbursement of funds across the healthcare value chain.

Payment discipline, Prof. Baale stressed, must also be non-negotiable. He recommended a guaranteed payment turnaround time of no more than 30 days for healthcare manufacturers and service providers, noting that predictable cash flow is critical for sustaining production, meeting regulatory standards, and planning long-term investments. In addition, he called for the establishment of a revolving healthcare fund to ensure continuity and long-term capital availability, rather than the current reliance on sporadic, one-off interventions. Such a fund, he explained, would allow capital to be recycled and redeployed, supporting sustained growth and resilience in the sector.

Prof. Baale also advocated the implementation of a guaranteed sales and offtake framework. By providing market assurance, he said, government-backed offtake arrangements would encourage manufacturers to expand capacity, invest in quality improvements, and reduce overall risk across the value chain. Collectively, these measures, he noted, would create a mutually reinforcing, win-win financing architecture—securing reliable supply for government, enabling sustainable scale for industry, reducing risk exposure for banks, attracting investor confidence, and ultimately improving access to quality healthcare products and services for Nigerian citizens.

In his concluding remarks, Prof. Baale issued a broad call to action across the healthcare ecosystem. Banks, he said, must evolve beyond transactional lending to become genuine development partners. Policymakers should begin to treat healthcare funding as infrastructure investment rather than recurrent expenditure. Regulators must continue to balance patient safety with industrial growth, while institutional investors should recognise healthcare as a long-term value sector with strategic national importance. According to him, the decisions taken now will determine whether Nigeria’s healthcare industrial boom matures into a durable pillar of economic development—or fades as a missed opportunity.