 There is a vast unmet need for access to medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. But typically international solutions focus on buying and importing medicines. Now open university researchers are arguing for more emphasis on making medicines in Africa, bringing together health and industry. This book which was co-edited by some colleagues of mine and I contribute to two chapters will change thinking around whether African countries make medicines better more efficiently and be able to distribute them and to make them available for the local populations. I think the open university has made a real difference in this field. The key thing that we're trying to encourage is an integration between the industrial development of pharmaceuticals and the improvement of the health sector. And we believe that those two can be built together. At the book's launch the open university researchers with colleagues from around the world are presenting their thoughts. Rather than being bought in India and China, medicines used in Africa to fight HIV AIDS, TB and malaria should be produced locally by Africa's own pharmaceutical industry. So our argument in the book is about the interconnection between industrial development and health. We are looking at an Africa that we want 50 years for our children, our children's children. So we're looking at improving the capacities, the capabilities of our systems to be able to manufacture our own drugs within the continent for the priority diseases that affect us uniquely. Perhaps the greatest value of this book is that really that makes a point that industrial policy, development policies and health policies should be aligned. This is important from the perspective of health security. If there is funding and if there is policy support and if there is local procurement of medicines within maybe 10, 15 years it is very possible for the industry to grow tremendously. So I would say there is a lot of momentum both at the political level than at the organizational level. Then there is also what we would call intellectual momentum which we talk about in the book as well as capacity building for the different skills that are needed to sustain pharmaceutical production actually being developed through partnerships with local universities and other skills development players. Some African companies are already producing at the kind of low prices and high quality which is essential to meet Africa's needs. Others can develop that but what is needed is an active industrial policy within African countries that allows new and improving firms based in Africa to meet the price and quality requirements of African health systems. One of the points that has been a major worry for me and many other people who are so passionate about this agenda is whether African governments would be able to sustain funding into this particular area and I think we are beginning to see that even some of the financing models we talk about in the book seem to speak to that evidence that it is beginning to happen. I agree that it is beginning to happen and it is essential that African governments and donors work together to try to get the financing system to work to bring health and industry together.