By Samwel Doe Ouma

 Kenya is betting that manufacturing more of its medicines and health products at home will lower treatment costs, reduce dependence on imports and strengthen the country’s ability to respond to future health emergencies, a senior health official said Tuesday.

Speaking at the launch of the Kenya Health Products and Technologies Local Manufacturing Strategy 2026–2030, Principal Secretary for Medical Services Dr. Ouma Oluga said the government sees local production as a critical part of wider health reforms under Taifa Care, the program at the center of President William Ruto’s push to expand access to healthcare.

Oluga said Kenya’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic and other health emergencies had exposed the risks of relying too heavily on imported medicines, vaccines and medical technologies.

“We’ve learned enough lessons,” Oluga told reporters in Nairobi. “If you don’t have the factories locally, then you cannot be guaranteed that you will get the products when you want them.”

Kenya imports about 70percent of the health products and technologies it uses, including nearly all of its vaccines, according to officials involved in the strategy. Oluga said that dependence has raised costs for patients and left the country vulnerable when global supply chains are disrupted.

During the pandemic, he said, Kenya waited more than a year to secure sufficient vaccine supplies and often received them in small batches. Imported products also carry extra costs linked to freight, intermediaries and supply bottlenecks, he said.

“Forty-five percent of the cost of our medicines is just middleman fees and freight,” Oluga said adding that, “So the painkillers that you’re buying at 100 shillings, if we were to manufacture them here locally, you’d buy them at 55 shillings.”

The local manufacturing strategy is designed to address that problem by encouraging investment in domestic production of medicines, diagnostics and other health products, while linking the effort to the government’s broader plan to make healthcare more affordable through the Social Health Authority.

Oluga said reducing the price of medicines is essential if Kenya’s health financing reforms are to work. If imported drugs remain expensive, he said, patients will continue to face out-of-pocket payments even when they are covered by public insurance schemes, and the cost of benefit packages under the Social Health Authority will remain under pressure.

He said the government wants local manufacturing to help bring down those costs so that public health coverage becomes more sustainable and more patients can access treatment without being forced to pay extra.

But Oluga also framed the strategy as an economic policy, saying local manufacturing could create jobs, attract foreign investment and give Kenyan universities and research institutions a clearer path for turning scientific work into commercial products.

“We have a lot of professors, very clever people. They publish a lot of things,” he said. “But what do I have to show for all this knowledge? That knowledge can only be channeled through industry.”

He said the government wants research from institutions such as Universities and other scientific bodies to feed more directly into manufacturing, creating what he described as an “end-to-end value system” linking academia, industry and healthcare delivery.

The strategy, he said, is intended to support that chain from research to production, while also helping build a stronger domestic supply base for hospitals and pharmacies.

Oluga stressed that the government itself will not build factories, but will instead focus on creating the conditions for manufacturers to invest. That includes putting in place policy and tax incentives, supporting research, improving regulation and using digital systems to better map demand for medicines across the country.

“Government cannot do it,” he said. “Government can only create the platform for it to be done. This is an industry initiative that is government-led.”

Among the government’s priorities, Oluga said, is improving Kenya’s regulatory capacity so local manufacturers can meet international quality standards and export more products.

He said Kenya has been working with the World Health Organization and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board to reach maturity level 3, a benchmark that would strengthen confidence in the country’s regulatory system and support regional exports.

He acknowledged that reaching that standard has been difficult because Kenya already has a relatively large number of manufacturers operating under different conditions, including older factories that may need costly upgrades to meet newer requirements.

“Somebody built his own factory in 1960,” Oluga said. “Then the government is telling them, now this factory, you have to do A, B, C, D. Which is good. Then the guy tells you, I have to invest millions to get to the standard you want me to get. Where do I get the money?”

He said the government, WHO and development partners had worked through some of those concerns and were trying to balance stricter quality standards with the financial realities facing local manufacturers.

Oluga rejected suggestions that Kenya has lagged behind regional competitors because it failed to support domestic manufacturers, saying the government has already offered tax and energy incentives and created opportunities for firms operating in **special economic zones and  export processing zones.

He said more still needs to be done, especially around financing and the broader industrial ecosystem, but described 2026 as one of the strongest years yet for Kenya’s local manufacturing agenda.

The push comes as Kenya seeks to position itself as a leader in Africa’s broader effort to expand domestic production of health commodities. The African Union has set a target of producing 60percentof the continent’s health commodities locally by 2040, and Ruto has been named the AU champion for local manufacturing.

Kenya is expected to host an African Union special summit in December, bringing together dozens of heads of state, and Oluga said the government wants the new strategy to show that the country is serious about leading not only on manufacturing but also on what he called “health security and health sovereignty.”

For now, the government’s message is that local manufacturing should no longer be treated as a side issue in health policy. Instead, officials say it sits at the center of the country’s attempt to lower the cost of care, protect patients from global supply shocks and create a healthcare system that can rely less on imports.

Whether that happens will depend on whether Kenya can turn a strategy document into working factories, lower-priced medicines and a stronger supply chain.

Oluga said that would require government, manufacturers, researchers and development partners to move together rather than treat the strategy as another policy promise.

“Our work is to encourage that sector and to make sure that they can access finances, they can have a regulatory system that is conducive for them,” he said. “But they must also be able to assure us that they will give us these products consistently and quality and with the cost that we can contain.”