kENUP Africa Foundation has been established as a Common Benefit Foundation dedicated to promote projects for the benefit of citizens in the Global South, and beyond.

Acknowledging the needs for pharmaceutical equity for the Global South in general, in December 2023 kENUP Foundation decided to establish kENUP Africa Foundation in Kigali, Rwanda. The new Common Benefit Foundation will be established as a Non-Profit Organisation dedicated to pursue activities not only in Africa, but also to build bridges for South/South collaborations between Africa and LATAM and the Caribbean, and with the European Union. 

Our activities are aligned to support both innovative industry players as well as public systems. 

In the private domain we are supporting companies that develop research-based interventions against diseases that are prevalent in the Global South and present a major risk for the most vulnerable population, often children and/or elderly. As such pharmaceutical product development often includes substantial investment for the conduction of clinical trials to guarantee efficacy and safety of the products, where a positive outcome is not guaranteed and risk financing is often not available on the private market. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are providing de-risk financing for such activities, that offer huge societal benefit and are economically viable. If successfully obtained and de-risking the development of such products, companies are often enabled to attract further financing on private markets through VC or commercial banks. kENUP supports such activities by consulting companies on potential partners from industry, research and finance, both public and private.

In the public domain, we support the development of new instruments, collaborations and mechanics that have the potential to overcome barriers hampering global access to life saving medical interventions for those in need. These could include new financing instruments, new procurement schemes or conducting studies. We do this by working with partners from Civic Society, Governments, International Organizations and Development Finance Institutions. 

kENUP Africa Foundation has been founded by kENUP Foundation Malta, which was established in November 2014 as a lawful Purpose Foundation, dedicated to the support of research-based innovation for societal benefit.

Since its inception, kENUP had been actively supporting the development of innovative interventions to tackle infectious diseases like Malaria or Zika. We co-developed new financing instruments with our partners (such as the EU Malaria Fund) or supported research based innovative companies to obtain public financing for de-risking of project development for interventions – among others - against the Flu, Zika virus or the Lime disease.

When the pandemic emerged in 2020, the development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics against Covid19 quickly became a top priority for policy makers in national and transnational institutions. During this time kENUP Foundation supported the development of a pipeline of interventions against Covid19 and conducted – together with its partners - a first representative empirical study of COVID-19 vaccine skeptics.

As the pandemic showed substantial inequities in the distribution and therefore availability of and access to life saving vaccines especially at the expense of the Global South, kENUP Foundation engaged with partners in the development of biologicals for the continent, and their end-to-end production in Africa.

While health is at the core of our activities, we are also dedicated to support activities that are targeting environmental issues. We are actively looking into the field of manufacturing and processing of raw materials under conditions that are more sustainable from an environmental and societal perspective.