Africa’s negotiators have firmly rejected the latest draft text at the sixth and final scheduled round of talks on a critical annex to the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, as the clock runs down to a May 2026 deadline that could define how the world responds to future pandemics.
The talks, convened in Geneva from Monday, March 23, to Saturday, March 28, 2026, are centred on the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system the unresolved centrepiece of the landmark WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2025. The PABS system is designed to govern how countries share dangerous pathogen data and what they receive in return, including access to vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments developed from that data.
Tension was palpable from the opening session. Namibia, speaking on behalf of the entire Africa region, rejected the latest draft PABS annex text, signalling that the continent’s negotiators would not accept a diluted agreement that replicates the vaccine inequities experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nigeria went further, describing the existing negotiating text as “contested,” reflecting what it called genuine disagreement on sovereignty, binding obligations, and who ultimately bears the costs and receives the benefits of pandemic equity.
The Africa Group, joined by Indonesia speaking for the wider Group for Equity, has consistently called for mandatory benefit-sharing arrangements, legal certainty, and technology transfer provisions that are enforceable rather than aspirational. Rich nations, led largely by European blocs, have pushed for more flexible, voluntary frameworks that they argue better protect the pharmaceutical innovation ecosystem and ensure open access to pathogen sequence data.
At the heart of the impasse is a concern that mirrors what unfolded during COVID-19. Africa, despite contributing invaluable genomic surveillance data that helped identify variants such as Beta and Omicron, received less than three percent of global vaccines while accounting for 17 percent of the world’s population. African negotiators are determined not to let that pattern repeat.
Progress in the negotiations has been painfully slow. A bloc of approximately 100 low and middle-income countries (LMICs) has demanded that the PABS annex include guaranteed access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics as the price of rapidly sharing information on novel pathogens. With only six formal negotiating days remaining in this final session, deep divisions persist on financing, legal enforceability, and the rights and obligations of both pathogen-contributing countries and those that develop resulting medical products.
Health activists and civil society organisations have warned that there is growing pressure to rush through a weak agreement simply to meet the WHA deadline, producing what they describe as a largely symbolic deal. In a letter to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, multiple South African health justice organisations cautioned against bowing to that pressure, urging African governments to hold firm unless their core demands are met.
The stakes are compounded by a shifting geopolitical environment. The United States withdrawal from the WHO and the pandemic talks earlier in 2025, followed by Argentina, has created a leadership vacuum in global health financing. US bilateral data-sharing arrangements with at least 15 developing countries are also raising concerns that parallel deal-making could fragment the multilateral framework African nations have fought to build.
A recent peer-reviewed analysis published in BMJ Global Health, authored by public health scholars from across Africa and beyond, proposed that African nations urgently establish a Pandemic Peer Review Mechanism (PPRM) modelled on the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) under the African Union (AU). The proposed mechanism would embed political accountability for pandemic preparedness at national and continental levels, ensuring commitments made in Geneva translate into action at home.
The outcome of the Geneva talks will be submitted to the 79th World Health Assembly in May 2026 for adoption. Whether this week produces a binding, enforceable framework or a weaker set of aspirational commitments will have lasting consequences for how equitably the world responds the next time a pandemic emerges a scenario WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has described not as a question of if, but of when.
