A supply chain becomes visible at the moment it fails: a delayed shipment, an undersubscribed tender, a missing ingredient with no qualified alternative. At that moment, localization is a question of national agency: how much of the chain can keep functioning at home, and how much expertise, investment, inputs and market access must still come from abroad?
Across the Middle East and North Africa, that question is reshaping pharmaceutical policy. Saudi Arabia is aligning local production with Vision 2030, health security and industrial diversification. The UAE is moving toward higher-value manufacturing and technology transfer. Morocco is positioning itself as a pharmaceutical and logistics hub for North Africa, linking local production to regional distribution and stronger supply chains. Jordan’s established manufacturers are expanding through exports.
The commercial machinery is real: tender preferences, centralized procurement, investment support and partnerships with international manufacturers. They can make a market more attractive. They cannot, by themselves, create a skilled workforce, strong quality systems or reliable supply. The test is what capability remains after the preference has done its job.
Saudi Arabia is turning procurement into industrial policy
The Kingdom’s local-content framework gives eligible national products a 10% price preference in relevant bid evaluation: the foreign product is treated as if its price were 10% higher for the comparison. Depending on the tender and applicable mechanism, mandatory-list requirements and local-content scoring can further shape bid outcomes. This is commercially meaningful, but precision matters. The 10% is an evaluation adjustment. It changes the competitive equation; it does not guarantee an award or a margin.
Central procurement adds a second lever: demand. NUPCO’s unified catalogue and annual tender planning give suppliers visibility into public-sector requirements; its catalogue is regularly updated, with a pharmaceutical update published in April 2026. Saudi Arabia has also used procurement partnerships explicitly to localize insulin manufacturing and transfer knowledge, bringing NUPCO, a local manufacturer and a multinational partner into a single framework. The strategic shift is from buying products alone to using purchasing power to shape where capability develops.
The Local Content and Government Procurement Authority (LCGPA), a Saudi Arabian government entity, was established in December 2018 to develop local economic capabilities, set procurement regulations, and ensure public spending retains capital inside the Kingdom. The LCGPA can apply a national-product price preference, give local content a defined weight in financial evaluation, or require products on its Mandatory List to be sourced from national manufacturers. Deeper Saudi participation – in people, assets, goods and services, and technology – can strengthen that position, subject to the tender’s methodology; however, a local packaging step alone does not guarantee a higher score.
Separately, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) maintains an incentive list for unregistered or unavailable medicines the market needs: eligible applications may be considered for priority registration, pricing flexibility, technical support or fee reductions.
Regulatory acceleration is targeted, not automatic
SFDA has articulated support for local generic production and for local manufacturing of biological products and advanced therapies.
SFDA’s guidance sets defined eligibility criteria, including serious conditions or unmet medical needs, first biosimilars and certain availability cases. For an accepted priority-review application, the target review time is reduced by 40% against the normal registration target; the pathway does not lower the required scientific or quality standard. For an unavailable medicine, the guidance links eligibility to specified SFDA lists and the national product mandatory lists.
The deeper dividend of localization is not the factory gate; it is the capability built around it. Each serious transfer can create skilled roles across production, engineering, quality control, validation, regulatory affairs and supply-chain management – and strengthen the local suppliers that serve them. But headcount alone is a weak measure. The strategic test is whether knowledge transfer becomes operational mastery: whether Saudi and regional teams can run complex processes, investigate deviations, protect data integrity, maintain global GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) standards and improve performance without permanent dependence on external experts. Technology transfer should transfer judgment as well as instructions; capability transfer should leave local teams able to own the process end to end, not simply operate it.
The regional race is moving upstream and outward
The GCC Health Council’s unified procurement programme pools requirements, runs common tenders and names support for Gulf pharmaceutical industries among its objectives. In the UAE, the National In-Country Value programme redirects procurement toward the domestic economy.
Tunisia’s pharmaceutical industry meets more than 60% of domestic medicine needs, yet roughly 40% of medicines are still imported – and the value of imports exceeds pharmaceutical export revenues. The challenge is to turn an established manufacturing base into greater resilience and a stronger export position. Jordan offers a different lesson: pharmaceutical exports rose 5.1% to JD 642 million in 2025, reaching 85 export markets. Domestic capability can reduce exposure to imports; it can also become an export platform.
The regional opportunity is to connect these strengths. A Saudi plant can anchor demand; a GCC purchasing platform can widen the addressable market; and export-oriented manufacturers in the Levant can extend regional reach.
Autonomy means options, not isolation
Autonomy is often mistaken for producing everything within national borders. That is neither practical nor necessary. Medicines depend on global flows of APIs, equipment, analytics, patents and expertise. The strategic goal is to reduce concentrated import exposure in critical products and inputs, develop qualified alternatives, and ensure local teams can sustain production when global conditions tighten. Autonomy is the ability to choose, adapt and keep supplying – not the absence of international links.
For executives, that means assessing localization molecule by molecule: Is the medicine critical or vulnerable to shortage? Does local production qualify for a tender or regulatory mechanism? Which manufacturing stage creates meaningful skills and value? Where are the API and technology dependencies? Can the product serve a regional or export market at competitive quality and cost?
Governments should make incentives predictable and tie them to measurable outcomes: dependable supply, quality, workforce development, technology transfer, supplier participation and rising local responsibility. Industry should show how capital turns into durable capability. The scorecard is whether local teams can operate and improve the process; whether delivery and price remain competitive; whether patients gain reliable access; and whether the platform can serve additional markets.
From Riyadh to Dubai and Amman, localization is becoming a strategic response to import exposure and a route to greater agency. The prize is not a wall around the market. It is a region with more choices at home, stronger production capability and a more influential place in global pharmaceutical supply.
About the Author:
Yasmine Ghorayeb is Business Development Manager, Corporate, at Algorithm Pharmaceuticals, where she leads strategic pharmaceutical localization, technology transfer, and cross-border partnerships across the Middle East. Her work focuses on strengthening regional healthcare resilience and pharmaceutical sovereignty through sustainable collaboration between global innovators and local stakeholders. She is also an independent filmmaker and writer whose work explores memory, identity, truth, and cultural continuity.
References:
Regulations on Preference for Local Content and Local SMEs and Companies Listed on the Capital Market in Business and Procurement Transactions Translation of Saudi Laws. (2019). https://www.mof.gov.sa/en/docslibrary/RegulationsInstructions/Documents/
Unified Catalogue - nupco. (2025, September 20). Nupco. https://www.nupco.com/suppliers/unified-catalogue/ فريق بوابة وزارة الصحة. (2026, October 8). Ministry Of Health Saudi Arabia. Ministry Of Health Saudi Arabia.https://www.moh.gov.sa/en/ministry/mediacenter/news/pages/news-2023-10-29-003.aspx
Guidance for Priority Review of Product Registration (Drug Sector Guidance 140225/V5.3-003-G-DS; 5.3). (2013). Saudi Food & Drug Authority.https://www.sfda.gov.sa/sites/default/files/2024-02/ProrityReviewGuidanceV53.pdf
Consolidated purchasing - GHC Landing. (2022, December 30). GHC Landing - GHC.https://www.ghc.sa/en/procurement/