Compulsory Licensing In Africa

Introduction

Africa bears a very heavy burden of disease and its poor pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity forces it to rely heavily upon imports from other countries to fulfil its basic needs. But a strict IP protection regime restricts foreign generic medicines manufactures from manufacturing medicines which are affordable. The Doha Declaration on TRIPS Agreement was adopted to deal with growing concerns of circumscribed access to affordable life saving drugs in less developed or developing countries. The Doha Declaration affirms that provisions of TRIPS Agreement obligating its members to protect IP rights should not prevent the members from taking measures to protect public health.¹ It gives member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) the right to enact legislations allowing the use of any patented material without permission of the patent holder, a provision known as "compulsory licensing". But since most African countries do not have the infrastructure