KEY POINTS

• AltBank’s Jekwu Ozoemene unveiled non-interest financing products for industrial pharmacists and healthcare operators across Nigeria.
• The bank’s offerings include stock financing, vendor and distributor financing, revolving drug funds and supply chain financing.
• The push targets Africa’s 97 percent dependence on imported drugs while bearing 25 percent of the global disease burden.

Jekwu Ozoemene’s Alternative Bank has rolled out a suite of non-interest financing products tailored for industrial pharmacists and healthcare operators in Nigeria, in a push aimed at cutting the continent’s reliance on imported medicines.

The Sterling-backed lender said the offerings, which include stock financing, vendor and distributor financing, revolving drug funds and supply chain financing, rest on asset-backed and risk-sharing models rather than conventional interest-based loans.

Now the move lands as Africa carries roughly 25 percent of the global disease burden while importing about 97 percent of its pharmaceutical products, a dependence the COVID-19 pandemic exposed in stark terms.

Pharma security as policy goal

Specifically, Ozoemene framed pharmaceutical self-sufficiency as a national security question, not just a commercial opportunity. He said local production capacity is essential to Nigeria’s healthcare resilience and broader economic survival.

“Pharma and medicine security and sovereignty is essential to Nigeria’s survival. We are positioned to partner with all stakeholders to make this a reality,” he said in an interview with the National Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria for the maiden edition of its Pharma Industry Digest.

Indeed, Ozoemene’s pitch positions AltBank as a strategic financing partner across the pharmaceutical value chain, from raw-material importers and contract manufacturers to distributors and clinical operators.

How the structure works

Moreover, the bank aligns repayment obligations with the actual cash flow of businesses, rather than fixed schedules that ignore working capital cycles. Ozoemene said the structure reduces pressure on manufacturers and distributors whose receivables often stretch beyond standard loan tenors.

The model leans on principles of non-interest finance, in which profit-sharing and asset-backed structures replace interest charges. Today, that framework has gained traction across Nigerian banks looking to capture both faith-aligned customers and pragmatic borrowers seeking flexible repayment terms.

Beyond imports

Furthermore, Ozoemene drew a clear line between financing importers and financing local producers. The bank wants exposure to industrial pharmacists building World Health Organization-compliant manufacturing plants to produce essential medicines domestically.

“We don’t only want to finance the company that imports the most products. We also want to finance industrial pharmacists establishing WHO-compliant manufacturing plants to produce essential medicines locally,” he said.

Additionally, the strategy aligns with federal-government efforts to declare a state of emergency on local drug manufacturing, an agenda industry stakeholders have pushed in recent months.

Wider healthcare bet

Meanwhile, AltBank is layering pharmaceutical financing into a broader healthcare play that includes health insurance schemes, health management information systems, Banking-as-a-Service platforms and capital market access initiatives, often in collaboration with state health boards.

The combination gives the bank visibility across financing, payments, infrastructure and capital raises, a position few lenders have built in Nigeria’s fragmented health-sector landscape.

Today, Nigeria’s drug-import bill remains a heavy foreign-exchange drag, particularly as naira depreciation has pushed retail medicine prices higher. Together, the FX pressure and supply-chain risk create demand for local manufacturing that AltBank wants to underwrite.

However, building WHO-compliant plants requires patient capital, technical expertise and regulatory navigation, factors that have limited past investments in the sector.

Whether AltBank’s structures can translate into operating plants will depend on uptake among pharmaceutical entrepreneurs and the bank’s ability to absorb sector-specific risks. Yet for now, Ozoemene’s product launch puts a more concrete financing path on the table for Nigeria’s drug-manufacturing ambitions.