Your Excellency, Minister Tidjani Thiam,
Excellencies ministers of health of OIC member countries,
Representatives of the Islamic Centre for Development of Trade, the Islamic Development Bank, the African Development Bank, distinguished ministers, investors, industry leaders, development partners, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
Asalam Aleykum Werahmatulahi Webarakatou
It is a great pleasure to join you today in Nouakchott for this important Regional Health Invest Forum.
I thank the Government of Mauritania for hosting this forum, and the Investment Promotion Agency of Mauritania, the Islamic Centre for Development of Trade, the Islamic Development Bank, the African Development Bank and all partners for making it possible.
I also wish to recognize His Excellency President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, who honoured the Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly as our Special Guest of Honour and keynote speaker in Geneva on 27 May 2024. I thank him for his continued support to WHO and for his personal commitment to health.
This forum comes at a defining moment, not only for Mauritania, but for Africa and the wider Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Around the world, countries are rethinking how they finance health, strengthen resilience and build strategic industries that protect both lives and economies. Mauritania has chosen to position itself at the centre of this conversation, as a driver of development, economic growth and social well-being.
Healthy populations drive productivity, while strong health systems protect societies from shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic reminded us of this in the starkest possible terms. It exposed deep inequities in access to vaccines, diagnostics and medicines, and revealed the risks of relying on too few manufacturing centres. Too many countries could not access the products they needed when they needed them most.
Let me put that experience in a wider context, because this is an investment forum, and numbers are the currency of trust in this room. Every dollar invested in health systems strengthening returns multiple dollars in economic productivity. Africa's population is the youngest in the world; by mid-century, one in four people on Earth will be African. That is a labour force, a consumer market and an innovation base that every investor in this room has a stake in. Health financing is not a side conversation to economic transformation. It is a precondition for it.
Health security requires stronger national and regional capacities.
Countries and regions must be able to produce a greater share of the quality-assured medicines, vaccines and diagnostics upon which their populations depend. African countries are already showing what can be achieved. Vaccine manufacturing is expanding in Egypt, Senegal and South Africa, and the African Continental Free Trade Area and the African Medicines Agency are creating opportunities for stronger regional health value chains.
But building that capacity also requires being direct about how health systems are financed, because the model that has carried much of the continent for decades has to change. For too long, health financing has depended heavily on external assistance and on out-of-pocket payments by patients themselves, the least equitable way to fund a health system. Domestic public financing for health remains below the commitments governments made two decades ago in Abuja. Recent shifts in global aid flows have made the fragility of that model impossible to ignore.
The lesson is not that external partnership no longer matters; it does, and WHO remains committed to it. The lesson is that domestic resource mobilization, blended finance and private investment need to move from the margins of health financing to the centre of it, alongside stronger primary health care, which delivers the highest return per dollar of any level of the health system.
That is why the theme of this forum, "From Strategy to Action," is both timely and important. The time for discussion has passed. The challenge before us is implementation. The answer lies in partnership.
WHO's role is not to replace domestic leadership or private capital; it is to make both more effective. We work directly with ministries of finance and health, together, to strengthen national health financing strategies and build the technical capacity needed to structure bankable health investments. Through the Health Impact Investment Platform, WHO is partnering with multilateral development banks to help countries transform national health priorities into investment-ready projects. Mauritania is among the countries actively exploring this approach.
Through initiatives such as the World Local Production Forum and the Global Private Sector Engagement Forum, WHO brings together governments, manufacturers, investors and development partners to accelerate technology transfer and strengthen local production. We welcome you to the Fourth World Local Production Forum, hosted by Indonesia in Bali next year. WHO also supports the Global Coalition for Local and Regional Production, Innovation and Equitable Access, which is helping to expand manufacturing capacity and advance more equitable access to health products.
No country can achieve health security alone. Expanding local production of medicines and vaccines across Africa and OIC Member States is not simply a health objective. It is an economic and strategic imperative. Manufacturing facilities alone are not enough; sustainable industries also require skilled people, effective regulation and technology transfer. The WHO Biomanufacturing Workforce Training Initiative, launched in 2023, has this year seen the launch of seven Regional Training Centers alongside a Global Training Hub, to scale the skilled biomanufacturing workforce.
And all of this requires trust. Investment follows trust. Strong regulatory systems are the foundation for sustainable investment and public confidence. Many countries in Africa are strengthening their regulatory authorities and building confidence in locally produced health products. Continued regulatory convergence will further strengthen both public health and private investment.
I welcome the efforts across OIC Member States to deepen cooperation in pharmaceutical development and market integration. The OIC provides a unique platform to connect manufacturers, regulators and investors across three continents. I commend Mauritania for bringing governments, development finance institutions, industry and investors together, and I note that the Islamic Development Bank and the African Development Bank are uniquely positioned to mobilize capital and de-risk investment in this transformation.
I encourage investors to view health not as a cost, but as a driver of economic growth and opportunity. This will require stronger partnerships between the public and private sectors. Governments create the enabling environment; development partners reduce risk; private investors bring the innovation and capital needed to scale solutions. Together we can accelerate technology transfer, expand manufacturing capacity and ensure investments generate tangible public health benefits.
Therefore, let us use this forum to deliver concrete results:
- New investments.
- New partnerships.
- New technology transfer arrangements.
- New capacity-building initiatives.
- And stronger regional cooperation.
Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,
Health security, economic development and pharmaceutical sovereignty go hand in hand. The goal of this forum is not simply to discuss challenges, but to mobilize the investments needed to solve them. The health financing targets African governments have set for themselves were never aid targets. They were investment targets, a recognition that a continent's health is inseparable from its economic future.
Let Nouakchott be remembered not simply as the place where we discussed investment in health, but as the place where we decided to invest differently, because every dollar invested in health is an investment in human capital, economic resilience and shared prosperity. I am glad to witness that Mauritania is on the move.
Together, let us move from strategy to implementation, from ambition to investment, and from investment to measurable impact for the people of Africa, the wider OIC region and the world.
Thank you.