The Creation and Evolution of the Donor Funded Market for Antimalarials and the Growing Role of Southern Firms

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, the question of access to medicines at affordable prices for Southern populations has appeared as one of the major challenges for the international governance of health. But what is at stake is the creation of market for medicines in the global South, particularly countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa. These markets are new in nature in the sense that they are driven by international organisations where Southern firms, especially from India, occupy an increasingly important position. However, the specificity of these markets and the way they are constituted have been little analysed. In this article, we suggest focusing the attention on the constitution of the market of antimalarial drugs and highlighting the role played by Southern firms in this market. Our study focuses on the public sector market of antimalarial drugs. We provide an institutional and quantitative analysis of the creation of this public market. We then discuss the growing importance of the Southern firms, mainly Indian and Chinese, in this market.