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Meeting highlights
- Pan-African Leader in Pharmaceutical Distribution: CFAO Healthcare is the leading fully integrated pharmaceutical distributor in Africa, with operations spanning all four regional clusters (North, West, East, and South), covering the entire value chain—from manufacturing to retail.
- Opella South Africa Acquisition & Growth Strategy: CFAO entered the South African consumer health market by acquiring operations from Sanofi’s Opella in South Africa. This move created a platform for expansion and offers a turnkey solution for market access (including regulatory, local manufacturing, distribution on a buy and sell model basis, and demand generation) for other pharmaceutical partners.
- Supply Chain Security & Regulation: On the continent, a major focus is on improving supply chain security to combat falsified medicines by adhering to global GxP standards and supporting regulatory enforcement in partnership with public sector stakeholders.
- Long-Term Vision & Local Commitment: With a 75-year presence in pharmaceuticals distribution on the continent, CFAO is deeply committed to sustainable investment in Africa’s private healthcare sector, offering a reliable alternative for pharmaceutical companies reassessing operations in the region. CFAO Healthcare South Africa, with 25.1% black ownership, is dedicated to sustainable growth and transformation within the industry.
EF: Could you provide an overview of your portfolio, your presence across sectors and regions, and how this has evolved in recent years?
PF: Firstly, CFAO Healthcare is part of the CFAO Group operating in 38 African countries and employing over 22,000 people across four strategic sectors: Mobility, Green Infra, Healthcare, and Consumer. CFAO combines industrial and commercial expertise with deep local roots. This structure gives us the operational reach and financial stability to support long-term growth in the pharmaceutical sector. As CFAO Healthcare, our vision is to establish the leading pharmaceutical distribution company across Africa, fully integrated along the value chain. It all began in 1949 in Senegal, where the company started as a wholesaler. Over time, the company expanded in two main ways: geographically and along the value chain. Geographically, we moved from West Africa to East Africa, starting with Kenya in 1999. We then entered North Africa, including Morocco and Algeria, and are now expanding our footprint in Southern Africa. Most pharmaceutical companies view Africa in four clusters: North, East, West, and South. We are now present in all four of those clusters and are working on strengthening our regional capabilities.
Across the value chain, we have expanded from upstream and downstream wholesale activities. The Group has built pre-distribution capabilities, recently opening a large 25,000-square-meter distribution center in France with a capacity for 28,000 pallets that serves our African markets and French Overseas territories. We have also developed manufacturing capabilities in Algeria and Morocco, where we offer contract manufacturing services. More recently, we announced the acquisition of Goodlife, the leading retail chain of pharmacies in Kenya. Our goal is to provide pharmaceutical companies with the support they need in Africa—whether that's contract manufacturing, market authorization holding, regulatory support, or even medical promotion through our strategic partner, Ethica.
This full-service model emerged from the realisation that large pharmaceutical companies may find it difficult to allocate capital and resources to African markets, particularly when compared to regions such as the US, Europe, or Japan. Many view Africa as an area where balancing risk and rewards is challenging. Our approach offers them a more efficient and reliable way to distribute their medicines across the Continent. Our ultimate goal is to ensure patients gain access to high-quality and reliable medicines throughout Africa in an efficient way.
EF: Could you share the strategic reasons behind acquiring Opella and why now is the right time to enter the consumer health market in South Africa?
PF: Our work with Opella extends beyond South Africa; at the end of last year, we also took control of operations in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The deal was triggered by Opella’s decision to shift to a distributor-based model in these key African countries. Few companies can offer distribution services across all four of those countries simultaneously, but we can. That is how we entered the South African market. We had been considering South Africa for some time, but since it is a competitive and advanced market, we wanted to find the right opportunity. This partnership with Opella offers exactly that. In South Africa, we now hold the market authorisations for Opella’s products. These products still belong to Opella, but we act as their distributor, managing everything locally with our strategic partner Ethica South Africa. This setup offers a solid foundation for attracting additional partners and expanding our offerings.
In South Africa, we are already able to provide manufacturers with full turnkey support, from importing and local contract manufacturing to inventory management, distribution, and even marketing and medical promotion through our partner. A significant part of my current work is raising awareness about our activities in South Africa and across the continent. We are actively seeking new partners and aim to demonstrate how we can help bring their products to market efficiently and reliably.
As part of the Opella deal, we acquired a well-known range of products that Sanofi originally developed around 25 years ago, called the Choice product range. These products are now owned by CFAO and marketed in South Africa. Although this is not our primary focus, we consider these opportunities when they are relevant. Sometimes, our competitor is not another company, but the risk of products being deregistered, which can ultimately limit access to care for patients.
What we offer is an alternative: a reliable, compliant partner capable of managing those products properly. When a manufacturer grants market authorization, they must trust that partner completely. That’s why our reputation is so important to us. It has been built over the past 75 years, and gives our partners confidence that their brands will be managed with high standards and integrity. This is how we assist manufacturers in maintaining market access, even when they no longer have a direct presence on the ground.
EF: We have noticed the recent white paper CFAO Healthcare published, “Securing the medicine distribution network in Africa”. Could you tell us more about the motivation behind it and its main findings?
PF: The white paper is the result of a reflection we initiated with the OPALS Foundation, driven by a shared conviction: access to medicines in Africa cannot be improved without structurally strengthening the pharmaceutical distribution chain. Beyond the question of availability, what’s at stake is the reliability, traceability, and compliance of the entire supply system—from import to final delivery.
In many African countries, health systems have made remarkable progress, but the pharmaceutical value chain remains fragmented, under-regulated, or overly dependent on informal markets. This leads to inefficiencies and significant disparities in patient access, especially in rural areas. We wanted to step back and look at the broader picture, not just from a business perspective, but from a public health standpoint.
The paper outlines concrete recommendations: encouraging regional regulatory harmonization, investing in compliant logistics infrastructure, fostering public-private partnerships, and rethinking the role of distributors as essential healthcare actors. We also shed light on success stories—countries and initiatives that show it is possible to build robust systems when the right ecosystem is in place.
For us, this white paper is part of a broader commitment: to contribute to building a safer, more structured pharmaceutical landscape across Africa. And the feedback we’ve received confirms this need. Wherever we’ve had the opportunity to present it—ministries of health, regulators, industry stakeholders—it has been welcomed as a useful and forward-looking contribution to a shared challenge.
EF: How are you using AI technology to enhance operations?
PF: AI is undoubtedly a hot topic in our company, just as it is for many others. Currently, our primary focus is on upgrading our ERP systems. That is our first step, because even though AI is powerful, it is only as good as the data you feed into it. If your data is not clean or accurate, the results will not be useful. We are investing significant effort in improving our systems and data quality. At the same time, as AI advances rapidly, we are also testing specific tools and ideas. For example, we are investigating how AI can enhance our stock management, enabling us to determine what to order, when to order it, and how much to keep on hand based on demand patterns and seasonal fluctuations. We understand that data quality can vary significantly across Africa. In South Africa, the data is strong and reliable, but in other countries, it is not always at the same level. That is something we have to keep in mind. We are investing in better systems, experimenting with practical AI tools, and remaining realistic about what AI’s current capabilities are. There is a lot of excitement around AI, but we are careful to separate the hype from what actually works.
EF: Looking back over your 10 years with the company, what memorable moments stand out to you most?
PF: When I joined in 2015, CFAO had no operations in Southern Africa. I have thoroughly enjoyed contributing to our development in this part of the continent, and every milestone of our recent expansion is memorable, leading us to generate 2.1 billion euros of sales in South Africa with approximately 7,000 employees.
EF: What are you most excited about right now in the healthcare sector?
PF: What excites me most about what we are building at CFAO is the scale and impact of our work. We are not just creating a more efficient model for the pharmaceutical industry—we are addressing real challenges that pharma manufacturers face in this region. At the same time, we are helping ensure that patients get access to medicine faster and more reliably, without sacrificing quality. Every time we meet with pharmaceutical companies, they tell us that this is the kind of solution they have been searching for over the years. So, the potential going forward is huge. I am also very motivated by the fact that we are part of an organization with a long-term vision for Africa. CFAO is fully committed to making major investments across the continent in the coming years. That kind of support and ambition makes the work even more rewarding. What drives me is knowing we are filling a major gap in the market. As global pharmaceutical companies struggle to balance risk and reward in Africa, our model offers a realistic and trustworthy way to continue operating and delivering much-needed medicines to those who need them.
