Emerging Solidarities and Sovereignties in the post-Pandemic post-Trump Era

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At the African Health Sovereignty Summit in Accra In August 2025, Ghana’s Health Minister urged participants “to re-imagine and co-create a future where Africa owns its health destiny”. His statements there resonate with powerful arguments made by leaders across the continent, ascendent amidst outrage at “vaccine apartheid” during the Covid pandemic and even more urgent in the wake of U.S. cuts to aid, to seize this moment of for greater African agency in medicine and health. Building capacity for local manufacturing of vaccines, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals has been a particularly prominent element of these articulations of the need for greater African control over its health priorities, described by the Director General of Africa CDC as the “second independence of Africa.”

This presentation draws on collaborative qualitative research undertaken into current efforts to catalyse African medical manufacturing, comprising analysis of published and grey literature, online and in-person interviews with key stakeholders from across the continent, and site visits in Ethiopia and South Africa. Our research is attentive to how sovereignty and solidarity are being invoked and materialised in ways that both resonate with and diverge from earlier periods of decolonial aspirations, and illuminates how wide-ranging African actors are engaging with medical manufacturing as a route to greater self-determination.

Lauren Paremoer, Associate Professor of Political Studies, University of Cape Town

Informed by a feminist political economy approach, her research focuses on health activism, conceptions and enactments of solidarity in global governance for health, and political mobilisation aimed at realising social citizenship in the Global South. She is a member of the People’s Health Movement, and is active in leading its Democratising Global Health Governance programme.

Anne Pollock, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London

A scholar in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies, her research explores feminist, antiracist, and postcolonial engagements with science, technology, and medicine. Two intertwining threads of her research focus on the impact of racism on health and the social science of pharmaceuticals, with a particular interest in endeavours to realise the potential of pharmaceutical research, development, manufacturing, and distribution to better serve public good.

Hosted by the African Leadership Centre and Africa research group, Africa Week is an annual celebration of research, education and outreach activities on Africa.

King's Africa Week brings together academics, researchers and students from across King's – and offers the opportunity to hear from African scholars, leaders and thinkers. It also showcases King's collaboration with African universities and partners.

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