Nigeria advocates health security sovereignty in Africa

*Nigeria urges a continental shift towards health security sovereignty across Africa with a view to transitioning the continent from reliance on foreign aids and/ or handouts to functional, self-sufficient, and homegrown healthcare systems

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Nigeria has called for a continental shift towards health security sovereignty in Africa, aimed at moving the continent from reliance on foreign aids to self-sufficient, homegrown health systems.

ConsumerConnect gathered Vice-President (Senator) Kashim Shettima, GCON, has become a matter of necessity to ensure the health of Africans is not subjected to the uncertainties of distant supply chains or the shifting priorities of global panic.

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Senator Shettima made the announced Nigeria’s position Friday, February 13, 2026, during a high-level side event on “Building Africa’s Health Security Sovereignty”, on the margins of the ongoing 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian capital.

The Africa health security and sovereignty initiative is a collaboration between the Nigerian government and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

It was designed to mobilise investments in the health workforce, community health, and sustainable immunisation programmes across the African continent.

Shettima, who represents President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the 2026 AU Summit, reaffirmed the country’s readiness to partner with other African economies, in order to build a continent that is capable of healing itself.

Stanley Nkwocha

Senior Special Assistant to The President on Media & Communications

(Office of The Vice President) Friday, February 13 stated Vice-President Shettima said: “Nigeria stands ready to collaborate with every member state of our Union to make health security sovereignty measurable in factories commissioned, laboratories accredited, health workers trained, counterfeit markets dismantled, and insurance coverage expanded.

“When history reflects on this generation of African leadership, may it record that when confronted with vulnerability, we chose capacity; when confronted with dependence, we chose dignity; and when confronted with uncertainty, we chose cooperation.

“And in choosing cooperation, we built a continent that could heal itself.”

He also cautioned against the consequences of vulnerability, recalling that during global health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic when the world turned inward, Africa waited, improvised and negotiated for rationed vaccines and scarce oxygen.

Acknowledging that there is dignity in endurance, the statement noted the Nigerian Vice-President, however, maintained that endurance is not a strategy.

According to him, “leadership is measured not by how long vulnerability can be withstood, but by how deliberately we reduce it.”

The Vice-President stated: “Health security is national security, and in an interconnected continent, national security is continental security.

“A virus, as we have witnessed, does not carry a passport.

” A counterfeit medicine does not respect a border. A pandemic does not wait for bureaucracy.”

How Nigeria tackles health challenges, by Shettima

Sharing the country’s approach to addressing health challenges, Senator Shettima outlined measures that Nigeria has been adopting to tackle health challenges.

The West African country is currently treating health matters with every seriousness under the leadership of President Tinubu, said he.

Shettima related that Nigeria is focusing on boosting local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, increasing domestic health financing, and strengthening regulatory oversight through various initiatives, such as the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative and Presidential Initiative to Unlock the Healthcare Value Chain (PIPUHVAC).

He further said: “Nigeria has approached this challenge with seriousness under the leadership of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“In December 2023, we launched the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, securing over 2.2 billion dollars in health-sector commitments anchored in measurable outcomes.”

The Vice-President noted: “The initiative set out to renovate and revitalise more than 17,000 primary health care centres across our Federation, to train 120,000 frontline health workers, and to expand health insurance coverage within three years through reforms driven by the National Health Insurance Authority.

“We prioritise this because we believe that sovereignty must rest on financial protection as much as on infrastructure.”

He equally attributed Nigeria’s success in responding swiftly to disease outbreaks that had overwhelmed the world to enhanced epidemic intelligence and emergency preparedness.

As time is currency in public health, the country is enhancing laboratory networks, expanding genomic surveillance, and reinforcing coordination at its emergency operations centres through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, stated Shettima.

Emphasising that sovereignty without standards amounts to exposure to risk, Senator Shettima said Nigeria has intensified regulatory oversight under the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

He disclosed the country is “upgrading quality-control laboratories, tightening enforcement against substandard and falsified medicines, and streamlining processes for compliant manufacturers.”

Besides public systems, the Vice-President stated that the nation is unlocking its healthcare value chain through the establishment of the presidential initiative to unlock the Healthcare Value Chain.

The target, he explained, “is to remove structural bottlenecks facing domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device assemblers, and biotechnology innovators.”

Shettima noted the goal also is “to catalyse investment in local drug manufacturing, diagnostics production, and biotechnology research.”

He, therefore, urged more private sector participation, insisting that it “is not an accessory to Africa’s health sovereignty agenda” but central to it, as governments cannot build the future of health sovereignty alone.

In his remarks earlier, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, thanked the CDC and AUC for their partnership with Nigeria to strengthen Africa’s health security and sovereignty, which he said will help build resilience across the continent in readiness for emergency situations.

Pate stated that Nigeria, under President Tinubu, is committed to leading by example by boosting capacity building initiatives for the health workforce in Nigeria and beyond and turning ambition into reality.

Toeing the line of Shettima’s submissions, Prof. Pate also spoke about several initiatives of the Nigerian Government aimed building a reliable health workforce database, boosting the workforce capabilities to handle complex situations, all in the bid to assist stakeholders bridge gaps in the rural-urban divide in the distribution of health workers across Nigeria.

Addressing the participants, Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC), highlighted the trend in the distribution of health workforce across Africa.

Kaseya commended Nigeria’s leadership in the area through healthcare reforms especially in building resilience and boosting immunisation programmes.

The Director-General of Africa CDC said at a time when Africa is facing shortage of skilled health workforce and fragile community health system, investments across the continent have remained fragmented and insufficient to address the issues.

He, however, urged synergy of resources and efforts within the region to reverse the negative trend in the health sector of the economy.

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