U.S. Treasury Secretary’s Visit Highlights Mylan Labs Success
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s upcoming visit to African nations will include a tour of the Lusaka distribution centre of Mylan Labs: a company at the forefront of Africa’s fight against disease and a model for international investment in Zambia.
Accompanying Secretary Yellen on the tour will be President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Yellen’s deputy Wally Adeyemo. Such a senior entourage for the Biden administration’s first extended visit to Africa demonstrates the importance of the trip and its goals.
The trip follows the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit of December 2022. Biden informed African leaders from 49 countries and the African Union of America’s belief in a strong U.S.-African partnership for the future, saying at the three-day summit in Washington that “The United States is ‘all in’ on Africa’s future”. Finalised at the summit was a $15 billion two-way package of trade and investment deals, signifying a strong future for Zambia and the African continent more widely.
One of the success stories of U.S. private investment in Africa, Mylan Labs exemplifies the potential of the new slew of deals being agreed between the U.S. and Africa in an attempt to offer African leaders investment choices more sustainable than those presented by China.
Mylan Labs is a U.S.-based pharmaceuticals brand, whose African branch specialises in affordable anti-malarial and anti-retroviral medication to aid the fight against malaria and HIV. Located at the Lusaka South Multi Facility Economic Zone, the distribution centre was launched in September 2018 and employs 75 Zambian healthcare workers.
The centre was established with the goal of making medicine more easily accessible to Zambians in need. Mylan is the world’s largest supplier of HIV and AIDS treatments, and then-Minister of Health Chilufya announced that 86% of those in Zambia living with HIV had been put onto a treatment plan after the site’s launch.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury stated on their website that Secretary Yellen would “tour the facility and highlight U.S.-Africa joint efforts to promote a healthy population, improve global health security, and collaborate to prevent and prepare for future pandemics”.
A renewed U.S. desire for improved economic and diplomatic ties with African nations comes at an opportune time for Zambia, whose finance minister is exploring financial alternatives to Chinese lending. In September 2022, Zambia announced it would totally cancel 12 projects – half of which would be financed by China EXIM Bank, and another two by ICBC and Jiangxi Corporation, totalling overall to roughly $1.4 billion.
The $1.3 billion zero-interest loan secured in August 2022 from the UN’s financial agency, the International Monetary Fund, seeks to push general economic growth through recurrent spending as an alternative to the infrastructure-focused projects funded by Chinese investors.
The IMF has projected a global average of 2.7% economic growth for 2023; for Africa, meanwhile, it has forecasted a mean growth rate of 3.7%. The arrival of new American investment opportunities, Zambian economists hope, will capitalise on and drive this anticipated economic boom in the next phase of Zambia’s recovery and growth in the post-COVID-19 era.