Read the Conversation
Meeting highlights:
- Career Transition: Cengiz Zaim transitioned from being Country President of Turkey to leading the broader META region (Middle East, Turkey, and Africa) at Sandoz in early 2025. His motivation is rooted in Sandoz’s mission to expand access to affordable, high-quality medicines.
- Purpose-Driven Leadership: Zaim emphasizes his passion for extending healthcare access, which he sees as both a responsibility and an opportunity. He is motivated daily by the impact Sandoz can have on patients' lives.
- 2025 Healthcare Landscape: He sees 2025 as a pivotal year, especially in Africa, where funding pressures coexist with reforms. Sustainability is a key theme.
- Sandoz’s Role: As the global leader in generics and biosimilars, Sandoz aims to help healthcare systems maintain innovation while saving costs, offering responsible pricing and sustainable access.
- Regional Challenges: Leading a diverse and complex region, Zaim focuses on strategic prioritization—choosing where Sandoz can have the greatest long-term impact and being selective about markets where they can make a real difference.
- Market Strategy: In some African countries, Sandoz has been assessing various strategic options to ensure sustainable access to medicines — including adapting its commercial approach in line with local needs and long-term impact potential.
EF: What mission did you set for yourself, and what do you hope to achieve?
CZ: Throughout my career in healthcare, across five countries, I’ve always been guided by our purpose: pioneering access to high-quality, affordable medicines. Each new role gives me a broader platform to live that purpose. With META, I now carry the responsibility—and the opportunity—of expanding access across a highly diverse region. This mission is what motivates me every single day.
EF: 2025 is an important year for Africa. While there are funding challenges in some markets, the continent is also in the spotlight with the G20 hosted by South Africa. From your perspective, is this year more of a challenge or an opportunity?
CZ Globally, healthcare systems are under increasing pressure in the post-COVID era—even in high-income countries with strong welfare models, there’s a growing emphasis on cost control and efficiency. In Africa, we’re seeing encouraging progress: Kenya, for example, is moving toward universal health coverage, while South Africa is working to balance public and private sector spending while maintaining access to innovative treatments.
The real test and opportunity lie in making these advances sustainable. That’s where Sandoz can play a vital role: by providing high-quality generics and biosimilars at affordable, responsible prices, we support the long-term viability of healthcare systems across the continent.
EF: The META region is incredibly large and diverse. How do you balance these differences while still identifying areas for impact?
CZ: I believe in focus. To focus effectively, you need to deliberately de-focus on certain things. That’s how we empower teams to channel their energy into what truly matters. We can’t be everywhere or pursue every opportunity. Instead, we prioritize markets where we can make a meaningful, long-term impact on patients’ lives. In others, we might choose to step back or seek alternative go-to-market models while ensuring patients still have uninterrupted access to our medicines.
For example, Africa was once treated as a purely social business when Sandoz was part of our former parent company. Now, after our separation, we’ve redefined that responsibility by working with NGOs and refocusing our portfolio. In some markets, we’ve shifted to partner-led models instead of maintaining full-fledged operations. These changes enable us to deliver sustainable access where it matters most.
EF: How would you define the strategic importance of Africa for Sandoz globally?
CZ: Africa is undergoing a demographic shift, with its population steadily aging. This naturally leads to a growing burden of chronic and oncological diseases. At the same time, access to advanced treatments such as biologics and immunotherapies remains limited for most people, often due to high costs and the absence of broad healthcare coverage.
This is precisely where Sandoz plays a vital role. By offering high-quality, affordable biosimilars, we help expand access to essential therapies for a much larger portion of the population.
As healthcare needs grow and systems across the continent develop, Sandoz is committed to being a reliable, long-term partner in selected markets. Our goal is to ensure that life-saving treatments become more accessible and sustainable for African patients today and in the future.
EF: Sandoz’s mission is to “pioneer access.” What does that mean to you personally, especially in the African context?
CZ: To me, “pioneering access” means being the difference between treatment and no treatment at all. In many cases, if Sandoz doesn’t offer an affordable alternative, patients simply go without essential care. A powerful example is human growth hormone for children. When the reference biological medicine was withdrawn from the market, Sandoz stepped in, doubled production capacity, and ensured continued access—without interruption. Without that intervention, those children would have grown several centimetres below their natural potential.
This is what pioneering access truly means: stepping in when others step back, and doing so in a way that is both responsible and sustainable. Especially in Africa, where health systems often face resource constraints, this commitment can change lives.
EF: Do you think African healthcare systems are recognizing the value of generics and biosimilars in achieving sustainability?
CZ: If systems don’t create savings from off-patent medicines, they won’t have the budget to fund the next wave of innovation or to handle unexpected emergencies like COVID. Biosimilars and generics are essential in building financial resilience. At Sandoz, we combine affordability with predictability. We’ve been market leaders in Europe for decades because we’re consistent and reliable.
Others might offer a low price once or twice, but we’re here for the long haul. We are the last major end-to-end producer of penicillins in Europe, the leading category of antibiotics worldwide. That scale allows us to support over 60 countries, including those most in need.
EF: You lead a team of over 1,000 people. How do you inspire and align them behind this mission of access?
CZ: Early in my career, my definition of success was very different. Today, after working across diverse roles and cultures, I’ve learned that people drive culture, and culture drives performance. That’s the foundation. I focus on building the right teams with the right capabilities, fostering collaboration, setting ambitious goals, and staying open-minded.
Success isn’t about the numbers or products we launch; it’s about the impact we leave on people’s lives. Whether that’s helping a patient access critical treatment or supporting a team member in their career journey, that’s what truly matters.
EF: You’ve spoken about the importance of digitalization and AI. How are you using these tools in a practical way across the region?
CZ: Digital tools are incredibly important in large and fragmented geographies like Africa. But it’s all about balance between digital engagement and human connection. Doctors and pharmacists still value face-to-face interaction, so we adapt accordingly.
We use digital platforms for training, engagement, and performance tracking. AI is helping us forecast demand and set accurate targets. But at the end of the day, people still make the difference. Technology supports, but it doesn’t replace it.
EF: The word “innovation” means different things across the pharma industry. For a generics and biosimilars company like Sandoz, how do you define innovation?
CZ: For us, innovation isn’t just about discovering the next molecule. It’s about how we deliver. That includes our go-to-market models, pricing strategies, policy engagement, and how we ensure continuity of supply during crises. Innovation also means having the infrastructure to prevent shortages, like we’ve done with anti-infectives and human growth hormones.
In fact, we create impact by ensuring that medicines reach people reliably and affordably, year after year.
EF: You started your career as a management trainee in Turkey and now lead one of the most important regions in global healthcare. How would you like to be remembered in the next five years?
CZ: We might not be able to change the world, but we can try. Every day, I aim to improve by 1%, even 0.1%. I want to be remembered as someone who helped people grow, who created a culture where individuals felt free to speak up, be themselves, and collaborate.
We’ll forget the numbers and product launches in ten years, but we won’t forget the people whose lives we touched, whether that’s helping a child grow with the right treatment or supporting a colleague’s development journey.
EF: Finally, do you have a closing message for our audience in Africa and beyond?
CZ: Africa has the talent, drive, and vision to shape its own healthcare future. Milestones like South Africa’s G20 presidency show that the world is paying attention, and rightly so. At Sandoz, we are proud to support this momentum. Our commitment is not only for today, but for the long term.
We’re here to listen, to collaborate, and to pioneer access together with our partners across the continent.
