Health Policy as Industrial Policy: The Challenge for Inclusive Industrialisation in East Africa

Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House (SOAS), Malet St, London WC1E 7HU

The XI SOAS Industrial Development and Policy (IDP) Lecture will be given by Professor Maureen Mackintosh.

Abstract
Health sectors are big buyers of industrial commodities, which means their funding, purchasing and market structures influence industrial development. And, since health sectors are strongly shaped by policy, while manufacturing suppliers typically rely on domestic demand at least for initial growth, national health policies are necessarily also national industrial policies.

As assuring universalist health care is one of the most inclusive interventions open to governments, health-linked industries offer a potential terrain for inclusive industrialisation. Yet in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), given the current political economy of LMIC health sectors, innovation and industrial development in health tend to be disequalising.

Using evidence from recent work by Tanzanian, Kenyan and UK researchers, Professor Mackintosh's lecture will outline incentive structures in East African health sectors that interact with industrial development to determine its inclusionary or exclusionary nature, and draw implications for policy.

For more information, please contact Antonio Andreoni (Convenor of the SOAS IDP Research Cluster).