Zimbabwe’s timely medicine donation to Botswana shows how solidarity and shared responsibility can strengthen African health systems from within.
A few days ago, Zimbabwe extended vital support to its western neighbour, Botswana, by donating antiretroviral medicines reports Medicines For Africa.
It was a timely and compassionate gesture rooted in the African spirit of ubuntu — the belief that our humanity is bound together: I am because you are. Yet this act should be seen as more than neighborly goodwill. It stands as a powerful demonstration of what purposeful, forward-looking African cooperation can and should look like.
The donation came at a critical time. Botswana has been facing an acute shortage of essential medicines that pushed its health system to the brink. The crisis prompted President Duma Boko to declare a state of emergency on medical supplies — a rare and sobering acknowledgment of its gravity. Hospitals were struggling to maintain stocks, patients could not access vital treatments, and anxiety was growing among both health professionals and citizens. The question on everyone’s mind was what would happen if the shortages persisted.
The roots of this emergency were multifaceted but familiar across African health systems. Global supply chain disruptions, delayed shipments, soaring procurement costs, and layers of bureaucracy combined to create a situation no government could easily control. For patients reliant on long-term treatment — including those living with chronic conditions — the shortage was more than an inconvenience. It was a direct threat to life.
Against this backdrop, Zimbabwe’s donation emerged as both practical and visionary. It showed that African nations can support one another directly, bypassing the slow, uncertain channels of international assistance. It was a demonstration of efficiency and solidarity — one that ensured medicines approaching expiry were used where they were needed most, instead of gathering dust in warehouses while patients in a neighboring country went without.
Medicine expiry remains a silent but costly challenge across the continent. Inefficiencies in stock rotation, logistical hurdles, and fragmented coordination often result in large volumes of valuable medicines expiring unused — drugs that could have saved lives elsewhere if shared in time.
A continentwide system that enables timely redistribution of surplus stock would not only prevent waste but also enhance preparedness and responsiveness when shortages arise.
Such a system would also help reduce reliance on emergency procurement, a practice that drains already-limited national budgets. Emergency purchases often mean inflated prices, rushed tenders, and expensive international shipments that stretch public resources. By contrast, sharing existing stock between countries is faster, more economical, and far more sustainable. When one country’s surplus becomes another’s solution, everyone gains. One prevents waste; the other averts crisis.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many African nations found themselves on the receiving end of near-expired donations from development partners, sometimes arriving with barely a week of shelf life left. While the intentions behind these donations were good, they exposed a troubling imbalance — external partners using African nations to offload excess stock they could no longer use, leaving African governments scrambling to distribute almost unusable products.
This experience sparked an important debate about sovereignty, dignity, and responsibility in public health. Should African countries accept every donation simply because it is free, even when it is of limited use?
Dr. Nicholas Crisp, South Africa’s deputy director general for the National Health Insurance, put it plainly: “We in South Africa have been offered a lot of vaccines. When those vaccines had a reasonable shelf life — at a time when our program had geared up to a point where we could use more than we could receive — those donations were timely and greatly appreciated,” he said. “Now we find ourselves in a situation where everyone wants to give us vaccines, even ones we don’t use in the country. Donors aren’t always happy when we turn them down, but they don’t always understand that the logistics of each vaccine are different. Countries need time to prepare. You can’t have a shelf life of a month or two to distribute a vaccine, manage the cold chain, procure needles and syringes, and vaccinate people. It’s not something you organize over a weekend.”
Crisp’s comments underscore an important shift from dependency to discernment — from passive acceptance to active leadership. African nations must be selective and strategic, taking only what aligns with their national priorities and quality standards.
The Zimbabwe-Botswana collaboration represents exactly this kind of mature, balanced partnership. It is African-led, grounded in mutual respect, and built on shared responsibility. It shows that solidarity does not have to flow from outside the continent — it can and must grow from within.
As African nations continue to strengthen their health systems, such collaborations should be encouraged and institutionalized. Governments, regional bodies, and health agencies should create structured mechanisms for sharing surplus medical supplies, supported by transparent data systems and reliable logistics networks.
The vision should be a self-sustaining network of cooperation — one that responds to need with foresight and builds resilience rather than dependency.
The Zimbabwe-Botswana example offers a glimpse of a new paradigm for Africa — one grounded in accountability, compassion, and shared progress. It reminds us that true development lies not in the charity of others but in the strength of our own collaboration. Africa needs more of this: partnerships that are pragmatic, principled, and proudly self-determined.
