
By Alex C
Of the four MINT countries (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey), Nigeria is growing fastest with the highest fertility rate and the largest population of children age 15 years and younger. It is projected that Nigeria’s population could outstrip that of the other three MINT countries by 2050 and by then, become the fourth most-populous country in the world with a population of 402 million.
While pharmaceutical market size is partly driven by population numbers, the major driver of market size is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country, as individuals and countries both have more disposable income to spend on healthcare.
Of the four countries, Nigeria and Indonesia have the fastest and most consistently growing GDP, at around 6 to 8 percent. These two countries have the lowest GDPs of the four MINT countries, at $1,555 and $3,557 per capita respectively, compared with $9,749 in Mexico, $10,666 in Turkey, and $51,749 in the United States, according to 2012 figures from the World Bank.
Nigeria recently rebased its GDP data which pushed it above South Africa as Africa’s biggest economy. Nigerian GDP now includes previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.
GDP for 2013 totalled 80.3 trillion naira (£307.6bn: $509.9bn), the Nigerian statistics office said. That compares with South Africa’s GDP of $370.3bn at the end of 2013.
Though estimates of the size of the pharmaceutical market in Nigeria vary significantly, Business Monitor International (BMI) in 2010 estimated Nigeria’s pharmaceutical market of generic medicines at $418 million, Over-the-Counter drugs (OTC) at $121million and $61million for branded medicines.
On the other hand, Frost & Sullivan estimates the total pharmaceutical market in Ghana and Nigeria this will reach $2.3 billion in 2016 driven by the burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases in both countries.
In 2009, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (PMG-MAN), the umbrella organization for drug manufacturers in Nigeria, estimated the size of the total pharmaceuticals and healthcare products(OTC, biological products (including vaccines, insulin, interferon, etc, as well as healthcare and lifestyle drugs) to be in excess of $2 billion annually.
According to PMG-MAN, Nigeria is responsible for about 60 percent of medicines produced in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a sub-regional group of fifteen countries, which has an estimated population of 280 million and a market size of US$ 3.5 billion for health products.
The West Africa sub-region makes up almost a third of the whole of Africa and has a strong presence of pharmaceutical manufacturers, with currently over 200 active manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. With the pharmaceutical market in West Africa projected to grow at between 5% to 7% annually, according to IMS Health, Nigeria drug demand is expected to rise steadily in the next few years giving its increasing population.
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