Central Africa’s medicine crisis: How colonial-era healthcare neglect and neoliberal trade policies enable deadly pharmaceutical trafficking

The current crisis is a direct descendant of the *1980s structural adjustment programs* imposed by the IMF and World Bank, which slashed public health budgets by 40% across Africa. These policies were explicitly designed to open markets for Western pharmaceuticals, as documented in the *2002 UNCTAD report*. Earlier, colonial powers like Belgium and France *banned local drug production* to prevent competition with metropole-based manufacturers, a pattern repeated today by the EU’s *Everything But Arms* trade deal, which prioritizes pharmaceutical exports from Africa to Europe over domestic supply. The *1995 Cairo Conference* on Population and Development noted how debt crises forced African nations to choose between buying drugs or repaying loans—this choice still defines the region’s healthcare today.