Nigeria has not manufactured a single human vaccine since 1993, according to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), exposing a decades-long dependence on overseas suppliers that business leaders and regulators now say the country must urgently reverse.
The disclosure came as billionaire industrialist Aliko Dangote, represented by his daughter Fatima Dangote, called for a new approach to healthcare in which Nigeria and other African countries move from being consumers of imported medical products to producers of medicines, vaccines and advanced therapies.
Speaking at the launch of Atunse Healthcare Limited and the African Regenerative Medicine and Longevity Summit in Lagos on Friday, Dangote said Africa’s dependence on foreign healthcare supplies had become a strategic vulnerability, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global supply chains and exposed unequal access to vaccines, diagnostics, medicines and other essential technologies.
“Dependence is a vulnerability. Resilience requires capacity and medical sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a matter of survival, dignity and strategic security,” Dangote said in a speech delivered on his behalf.
The warning goes beyond vaccines. It points to a broader effort to build a domestic healthcare industry spanning pharmaceutical manufacturing, biotechnology, research, diagnostics and regenerative medicine, sectors that could turn Nigeria’s large population into a platform for healthcare innovation rather than simply a market for products developed elsewhere.
The 33-year vaccine gap
The vaccine manufacturing gap illustrates the scale of the challenge.
Khadijah Ade-Abolade, director, vaccines, biologics & medical devices registration & regulatory affairs directorate of NAFDAC, said Nigeria once produced yellow fever vaccines and supplied the West African sub-region, but that production facility was shut down in 1993. Since then, the country has not manufactured a human vaccine, according to the agency’s presentation at the summit.
Historical research confirms the existence of Nigeria’s Federal Vaccine Production Laboratory in Yaba in 1993, when researchers were working on yellow fever vaccination.
Today, Nigeria’s vaccine supply chain remains heavily dependent on imports. NAFDAC’s own 2024 lot-release records, for example, list yellow fever vaccines manufactured in Brazil and measles, mumps and rubella vaccines produced by India’s Serum Institute, underscoring the country’s reliance on foreign manufacturers for important immunisation products.
For Dangote, that dependence is not simply an industrial policy problem. It is a national-security issue.
The Covid-19 crisis showed how quickly countries could prioritise their own populations when supplies became scarce, leaving nations without domestic manufacturing capacity competing for access to essential products.
“COVID-19 showed us the risk,” Ade-Abolade said at the summit, adding that with almost 250 million Nigerians depending on vaccines manufactured outside the country, local production is no longer an issue that can be deferred.
Dangote’s medical sovereignty push
Dangote’s intervention places healthcare alongside the manufacturing, infrastructure and industrial investments that have traditionally defined his business empire.
His argument is that healthcare should be treated as an economic asset rather than solely as a social service.
He said acountry capable of protecting its population is better positioned to maintain a productive workforce, retain skilled professionals, attract investment and withstand future crises.
That means building the capacity to research, manufacture and regulate medical products locally.
“Nigeria must do more than consume medical innovation. We must produce it,” Dangote said.
He called for greater investment in research, local manufacturing, skilled talent, clinical and laboratory infrastructure and regulatory systems capable of meeting international standards.
The ambition is significant. Nigeria has the population, scientific talent, entrepreneurial base and regional market needed to develop a healthcare industry that could serve not only its own citizens but neighbouring African countries.
But the gap between that ambition and current industrial capacity remains wide.
A 2026 study of Nigeria’s vaccine manufacturing ecosystem identified high capital costs, inadequate infrastructure, shortages of technical skills, brain drain, regulatory challenges, weak supply chains and uncertain markets among the major barriers to local production.
Private capital meets public health
Dangote’s speech also pointed to the role of private capital in closing that gap.
He cited the Coalition Against Covid-19, or CACOVID, championed by the Aliko Dangote Foundation and other private-sector leaders, as evidence that businesses can mobilise resources quickly when public health emergencies overwhelm existing systems.
The foundation has also supported interventions covering polio, malaria, malnutrition, Ebola and Covid-19.
The larger lesson, Dangote argued, is that government cannot build medical sovereignty alone.
“Healthcare systems weak impose costs beyond deaths and illness, including lost productivity, disrupted businesses, delayed education and weaker economic development, he said.
That creates an investment case for healthcare manufacturing and research, particularly as Nigeria seeks to develop more sophisticated industries.
From vaccines to regenerative medicine
The push for local vaccine manufacturing is arriving at the same time Nigeria is beginning to explore a more advanced area of healthcare: regenerative medicine.
The sector encompasses technologies including stem-cell therapies, gene therapies and other cellular interventions designed to repair or replace damaged tissue rather than merely manage symptoms.
Ade-Abolade, NAFDAC representative, said it is preparing its regulatory framework for this emerging industry, including specialised structures for vaccines, biologics and medical devices.
She said biological and cell-based products require more stringent oversight than conventional chemically synthesised medicines because of their complexity, sensitivity and inherent variability.
Manufacturers seeking registration must provide detailed information on the source and characterisation of biological materials, manufacturing conditions, purification processes and clinical evidence, she said.
Crucially, the NAFDAC director also wants evidence relevant to African populations.
Much of the clinical evidence submitted for imported products comes from Western populations, according to the agency. Ade-Abolade said she expects companies to provide African data or validate foreign evidence locally before products are approved.
That requirement could become increasingly important as companies such as Atunse Healthcare seek to establish themselves in Nigeria’s regenerative-medicine market.
Atunse launch puts local biologics manufacturing on Nigeria’s healthcare agenda
The push for local production is already taking shape in Nigeria’s private sector. Atunse Healthcare Ltd. launched in Lagos on Friday with plans to manufacture and distribute advanced regenerative biologics in Nigeria, while building the scientific and clinical workforce needed to support the industry.
The company, a partnership between US-based KweHealth LLC and Nigeria’s Tri-State Healthcare System, says it is developing four capabilities around a single healthcare platform: clinical delivery, advanced biomanufacturing, research and clinical translation, and regulatory capability.
Atunse is working toward cGMP-grade production of advanced biologics in Nigeria, with a longer-term roadmap that includes vaccines and, eventually, cell and gene therapies. The company says its aim is to move Nigeria away from an import-dependent model in which patients travel abroad for advanced treatment and toward a system where treatment, manufacturing, research and specialist skills are developed locally.
That ambition reflects the wider medical-sovereignty argument advanced by Dangote at the launch. Africa imports about 99 percent of the vaccines and more than 95 percent of the medicines it uses, according to figures cited by Atunse, while producing less than one percent of its vaccine supply. The company said Nigerians spent an estimated $2.39 billion abroad in 2024 seeking medical care.
Sola Oluwole, Atunse chief executive officer, said the economic cost extends beyond money spent overseas, arguing that Nigeria also loses the capital, demand and clinical expertise that could support a domestic healthcare industry.
The company’s launch also puts workforce development at the centre of the manufacturing push. Atunse said biomanufacturing, quality assurance, regulatory science and clinical research could create high-skilled and durable jobs in Nigeria, where such capabilities remain limited partly because the country has had little domestic production on which to build expertise.
The company is currently working with four investigational platforms developed and manufactured by KweHealth, AVEXO, KH-1814, AIOVA and NKIRA. Atunse said the platforms are being used only within approved regulatory and ethical frameworks and with informed consent, and stressed that they are not approved for any indication and that the company makes no claims about their safety or efficacy.
The launch comes as Nigeria’s regulator seeks to build the oversight capacity required for a more sophisticated biologics industry.
NAFDAC draws a line
The regulatory challenge is particularly sensitive because regenerative medicine is attracting both serious scientific investment and unproven commercial claims.
Ade-Abolade warned against wellness centres, online vendors and other operators promoting purported stem-cell treatments without adequate evidence.
She said NAFDAC has encountered claims of “miraculous” cures for conditions including autism and warned that selling unverified biological treatments to desperate patients could cause serious harm.
Ade-Abolade affirmed that NAFDAC would use public education and engagement to discourage questionable practices but would also enforce the law where violations are severe.
That creates a delicate balance for Nigeria’s emerging industry: regulators must encourage innovation without allowing the country to become a market for experimental or unproven therapies.
“Science without regulatory discipline leads to chaos and public harm,” Ade-Abolade posited
The Bigger Industrial Opportunity
The vaccine deficit is therefore only one part of a much larger healthcare-industrialisation problem.
Nigeria imports medicines, vaccines and other medical technologies while simultaneously possessing a large consumer market, universities, medical professionals, research institutions and a growing technology ecosystem.
The challenge is converting those assets into production capacity.
Recent research into Nigeria’s vaccine sector found that local manufacturing will require not just scientific expertise but sustained financing, reliable power and water, technology transfer, procurement commitments and stronger market mechanisms.
That suggests that simply announcing factories may not be enough. Manufacturers need predictable demand, competitive financing, skilled workers and infrastructure capable of meeting the stringent requirements of biological production.
There are signs of movement beyond human vaccines. In July, the Federal Government backed a proposed $100 million veterinary vaccine manufacturing project designed to produce as many as 1.2 billion doses annually at peak capacity. The project is expected to use technology transfer from Chinese manufacturers and employ Nigerian professionals.
For human vaccines, however, Nigeria still faces the more difficult task of rebuilding an industry that effectively disappeared decades ago.
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A test of medical sovereignty
Dangote’s argument ultimately reframes Nigeria’s healthcare challenge.
The question is no longer simply whether Nigerians can obtain medicines and vaccines when they need them. It is whether the country can build enough of the scientific, industrial and regulatory infrastructure required to make those products itself and eventually develop therapies for the wider African market.
That ambition is particularly relevant as healthcare moves toward biologics, precision medicine, genomics and regenerative therapies.
Dangote’s broader message was that Nigeria cannot expect to become a healthcare leader by remaining at the end of the global supply chain.
“Africa must become not only a consumer of advanced medicine, but also a producer and a global contributor to it,” he said.
For a country that has gone more than three decades without human vaccine manufacturing, that transformation would require more than a new factory.
It would require a sustained industrial strategy linking research, finance, manufacturing, regulation, talent and public procurement.
The prize is larger than vaccine self-sufficiency: it is the creation of a healthcare industry capable of keeping African talent at home, attracting investment, generating skilled jobs and positioning Nigeria at the centre of the continent’s next medical revolution, Dangote argues.
Royal Ibeh is a senior journalist with years of experience reporting on Nigeria’s technology and health sectors. She currently covers the Technology and Health beats for BusinessDay newspaper, where she writes in-depth stories on digital innovation, telecom infrastructure, healthcare systems, and public health policies.
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