Imagine a healthcare centre in Northern Nigeria with inadequate medical supplies and bare shelves, unable to receive crucial resources because of supply chain deficiencies. Africa suffers from several healthcare inadequacies, and logistics is one of the most critical. Logistics in Africa, and many other low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), can often be a complex game.
Beyond the poor infrastructure, insecurity, and telecommunications services lies a more critical issue: finding dedicated and trusted logistics service providers to supply many areas on the continent with crucial medical and pharmaceutical products.
The World Health Organization estimates that 50% of vaccines are wasted globally, mostly due to supply chain issues.
“What typically happens is that a donor based in Geneva, the US, France, or anywhere else would hire a consulting firm active in a country. And, I did it in Cameroon, we went door to door and called a lot of potential logistics service providers to ultimately make a list of who is there and what services they can offer. But those endeavours are long, they take a whole team to do it, and they are costly.” Lantos Pin, Health Supply Chain Expert, and Co-founder of Logixity, tells Techpoint Africa.
The Logistics Marketplace puts an end to this problem.
As a first-of-its-kind global good platform, the Logistics Marketplace centralises trusted logistics services, making it seamless for key health stakeholders, like governments, global health partners, humanitarian response organisations, international and UN agencies, manufacturers, and distributors to access, engage with, and partner with logistics companies.
Very often, public health organisations like a ministry of health within a country and humanitarian health organisations like Doctors Without Borders and the UNICEF rely on logistics service providers to distribute medicines and crucial health supplies quickly to communities in need. The Logistics Marketplace makes it easier for these organisations to find the providers who can do that.
“In too many low- and middle-income countries, it’s not a lack of infrastructure that slows the movement of life-saving health and humanitarian products; it’s the difficulty of finding the right logistics partners. The Logistics Marketplace is designed to solve that problem.
“By giving buyers real-time visibility into the range of providers operating in a country, and giving providers a platform to showcase their capabilities, we’re reducing friction, increasing competition, and ultimately helping supply chains run smarter and faster,” Scott Dubin, Supply Chain Private Sector Engagement Advisor at The Global Fund, said in a written statement.
Who is the global good platform for?
The Logistics marketplace is a global good platform. This means that it is a not-for-profit, free-for-all resource funded by the Global Fund.
“In global health, we refer to a global good as an openly accessible resource that we’ve designed to address inefficiencies that we are facing in the health procurement and supply chain management. There are challenges that we are coming across and global goods are aimed to resolve them in a way that governments, technical service advisors or donors can benefit from having that global good available,” Pin explains.
The marketplace is powered by Logixity, a SaaS platform that provides the backend on which the global good operates, and is designed to cater to three categories of people in the health supply chain.
Buyers on the platform include organisations such as governments, global health partners, humanitarian response organisations, manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors, who use the platform to discover logistics providers and manage all logistics sourcing. These organisations post tenders inviting service providers to bid for the job.
Providers are logistics companies showcasing their services on the marketplace. They include road, air, and rail transporters, warehouse providers, cold chain specialists, and other agencies offering specialised logistics services. These companies respond to the tenders posted by healthcare organisations. Seek business opportunities and offer logistics services.
The platform also has a place for organisations that want to play the role of buyers and providers. These categories of users, typically freight forwarders, 3PL and 4PL providers, and technical assistance providers, can seek logistics partners and also provide services to other healthcare organisations.
Ensuring the right providers are visible
Transporting essential healthcare resources is a priority task due to the sensitive nature of the goods, and the Logistics Marketplace does not give this task to just anyone.
While the platform is free for all, a thorough vetting process is carried out for service providers to ensure that buyers have an array of qualified providers to choose from.
“We require a lot of official information, and if you cannot provide it, we assume that you’re too informal to participate in the Logistics Marketplace. That’s already one step in vetting that we have actual companies active on the marketplace,” Pin says.
He adds that the platform allows healthcare stakeholders to choose the service providers capable of meeting all their needs. A pharmaceutical company’s logistics needs may differ from those of a government, but both can find providers suited to their needs on the marketplace.
“Sooner than we can anticipate, countries across Africa will want to take ownership of their pharmaceutical and health supply chains or their whole health system. I hope that, in the process of governments doing that, our Logistics Marketplace platform can help them better manage their logistics service providers.” Pin tells Techpoint Africa.
