Por Renan Filho · 2026-09-24The continent of Africa is facing a new and devastating health threat that has little to do with malaria or HIV. Chronic non-communicable diseases — diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and cancer — are now spreading at an alarming rate, and the numbers are staggering. According to the World Health Organisation, deaths from chronic diseases in sub-Saharan Africa are projected to overtake infectious diseases within the next decade, a shift that will place enormous strain on already fragile healthcare systems.
Yet while the United Kingdom and other European nations are quick to lecture African governments on public health policy, they are simultaneously exporting the very products that fuel this epidemic. British consumers enjoy cheap sugar, processed foods and alcohol, but the same trade policies that keep these goods affordable at home have contributed to a dramatic rise in obesity and related illnesses across the developing world. A report from the Overseas Development Institute in London confirmed that British food and beverage companies have aggressively expanded into African markets, capitalising on rising urban incomes and a growing middle class.
The data is impossible to ignore. The International Diabetes Federation now estimates that over 24 million adults in Africa are living with diabetes — a four-fold increase since 2000 — and the figure is expected to climb to 55 million by 2045. Meanwhile, hypertension affects roughly 30% of adults in many sub-Saharan countries, with many cases going undiagnosed due to a severe lack of medical infrastructure. The centre of this crisis is not a matter of genetics or climate; it is a direct consequence of dietary transition, sedentary urban lifestyles, and the relentless marketing of ultra-processed foods.
Why does this matter to Britain? The National Health Service is already struggling to cope with its own chronic disease burden, and the British taxpayer is footing a bill of over £150 billion per year for healthcare. But the UK’s response to the African crisis has been inconsistent at best. In 2022, the government pledged £1.5 billion in overseas development aid for health programmes, yet a significant portion of that money is channelled through multilateral agencies with poor accountability. Meanwhile, the Department for International Trade has actively promoted British food and drink exports to African nations as part of the post-Brexit Global Britain agenda, ignoring the long-term consequences.
The FORTIS analysis is straightforward: the state-led aid model has proven catastrophically inefficient for decades. Western governments spent billions on vertical disease programmes that deliver short-term results but fail to build sustainable health systems. The solution to Africa’s chronic disease crisis is not more handouts or paternalistic intervention — it is economic liberalisation, free trade in medical technology, and the removal of tariff barriers that keep life-saving drugs and diagnostic equipment prohibitively expensive. African entrepreneurs, not London-based bureaucrats, are the ones who can build local clinics, train local nurses, and develop affordable treatment models tailored to local realities.
Nonetheless, the counter-argument must be acknowledged with intellectual honesty. Left-wing campaigners and some public health experts argue that the pharmaceutical industry and private healthcare providers cannot be trusted to serve poor populations, and that government intervention is necessary to guarantee access. They raise legitimate concerns about price gouging and the concentration of market power among global pharmaceutical giants. But their proposed remedy — more state control, more taxation, more regulation — has already been tried in countless African countries with dismal results. Public hospitals in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa are chronically underfunded, understaffed and inaccessible to the rural poor, while parallel private clinics charge fees that exclude nearly all but the affluent elite.
The thorny question of British trade policy deserves a sharper examination. In 2021, the UK maintained its tariff-free access for African goods under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences, which is commendable. However, the UK simultaneously continues to subsidise its own agricultural sector, particularly sugar beet production, distorting global prices and undermining African farmers who could otherwise compete. This is a classic case of doing the opposite of what is preached. If the British government genuinely wants to address the chronic disease crisis in Africa, it should start by dismantling its own protectionist agro-industry subsidies, not by funding virtue-signalling campaigns on social media.
At the heart of this issue lies a fundamental philosophical mismatch. The British establishment — both Conservative and Labour — treats health as a collective problem to be solved by central planning and redistribution. The FORTIS perspective rejects this premise. Health is an individual responsibility nested within free-market institutions. The role of the state should be limited to enforcing contracts, maintaining property rights, and ensuring honest information in the marketplace. When governments attempt to micromanage diets, lifestyles and medical priorities — whether in Manchester or in Nairobi — they inevitably waste resources and distort human behaviour.
A more promising approach would involve a dramatic reduction in the regulatory hurdles that prevent generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in India and China from selling affordable medicines in African markets. British trade negotiators could leverage post-Brexit freedoms to forge new bilateral agreements that prioritise medical supply chain resilience. In parallel, the UK should encourage a greater role for private health insurance schemes, community cooperatives, and direct payment models that have proven far more effective in emerging economies than government-run facilities. The Ethiopian health extension programme, supported by British aid but implemented through local woreda administrations, has shown modest success by empowering village-level health workers rather than relying on Western-branded hospitals.
Finally, we must resist the romanticised victim narrative. Africa is not a helpless continent awaiting salvation from European compassion. It is a dynamic region with some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and its people have proven extraordinary resilience in the face of adversity. The chronic disease epidemic is real, but so are the opportunities for innovation. Drone delivery networks in Rwanda, mobile health diagnostics in Kenya, and telemedicine platforms in Ghana demonstrate that African technology entrepreneurs are already leapfrogging Western infrastructure constraints. The British government’s most productive contribution would be to get out of the way and allow these market-driven solutions to flourish.
For the sake of the British taxpayer and the African citizen alike, it is time to abandon the outdated colonial mindset of perpetual aid and control. The chronic disease crisis will not be solved by bigger budgets and more conferences. It will be solved by the free exchange of goods, services and ideas. If the UK genuinely wishes to lead on global health, it should lead by example — by slashing its own state bureaucracy, cutting trade-distorting subsidies, and promoting a vision of individual liberty and economic dynamism that has lifted more people out of poverty than any aid programme ever devised.