African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation

The African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) was established in 2023 to improve Africa’s local pharmaceutical capacity and access to technologies needed to discover and manufacture medicines. This new initiative was prompted by the vaccine inequities experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I highlight four critical concerns regarding the structural and operational framework of the APTF, which have the potential to undermine the Foundation's objectives and legitimacy: the misallocation of public resources due to the existence of a similar agency established by the African Union (AU), the Foundation's endorsement of BioNTech's opaque "black box" system, which conflicts with its objectives, the continental approach that overlooks the diversity of the African continent, and the lack of a clear public accountability structure in its governance framework. Consequently, I offer preliminary suggestions on how these concerns might be addressed.