Give and Take: Developmental Foreign Aid and the Pharmaceutical Industry in East Africa by Nitsan Chorev (review)

ABSTRACT

Nitsan Chorev's Give and Take is an in-depth and well-researched comparative historical analysis of the kind of foreign aid that facilitated the development and growth of the pharmaceutical industry in East Africa. [...]the decision to purchase locally manufactured drugs for "rations kits” in Kenya, but not in Tanzania or Uganda, was instrumental in the growth of the Kenyan industry and equally detrimental to the fledgling Tanzanian and virtually nonexistent Ugandan pharmaceutical sectors. [...]Chorev shows how this creation of a market, which expands significantly in the wake of HIV/AIDS, was only part of the equation. [...]the remarkable value of Chorev's work has only been amplified since its publication by the highly unequal global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly in Africa, and a subsequent edition might include a prefatory note on the relevance of Give and Take to the COVID pandemic.