Anti-Counterfeit Protection for Pharmaceuticals in Africa

The scale of the problem, stated carefully

The World Health Organization estimates that roughly one in ten medical products circulating in low- and middle-income countries is substandard or falsified. Reviews focused on Africa put the figure higher — a 2025 review in Frontiers in Pharmacology cites prevalence estimates between 18.7% and 22.6%, drawn from studies using different sampling methods and different definitions. The honest summary is that no one has a precise number, and every credible estimate is bad.

The human cost is what matters to a regulator and to your board. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that up to 500,000 deaths a year in sub-Saharan Africa are linked to falsified and substandard medicines, driven mainly by failed antimalarials and antibiotics given to children.

How falsified medicine reaches the pharmacy shelf

Exporters often assume the risk is at the border. Increasingly it is not. The OECD and EUIPO reported in 2025 that counterfeiters have shifted toward producing closer to the destination market — importing packaging, components and labels separately and assembling them near the point of sale. Customs seizures of finished fakes therefore understate the problem.

• ●Copied packaging carrying a real batch number lifted from a genuine pack.
• ●Genuine packs diverted from a tender, donation or another country's price tier, then resold where margins are higher.
• ●Expired stock repackaged with new dates.
• ●Empty genuine packaging recovered from waste and refilled.

What VerifyGuard does for a pharmaceutical exporter

1. 1Gives every pack a unique, cryptographically signed code. A made-up code fails signature validation outright, so counterfeiters cannot generate valid ones.
2. 2Lets a patient or pharmacist verify in the phone's browser — no app, no SMS cost, and the page is built for 3G and entry-level Android handsets.
3. 3Detects clones: one serial scanned on many devices, in many places, or far from its intended market is the signature of a photocopied label.
4. 4Flags diversion: tie each batch to the country you shipped it to, and scans elsewhere are raised as possible parallel imports.
5. 5Collects geo-tagged counterfeit reports from consumers and pharmacists, including the outlet where the pack was bought.
6. 6Emails your nominated staff when a code is quarantined, and gives you a printable counterfeit activity report by region.
7. 7Integrates with your serialisation or packaging line over a REST API, so codes can be generated from your own systems.

How this sits alongside NAFDAC's Mobile Authentication Service

Nigeria's NAFDAC operates the Mobile Authentication Service (MAS), under which high-risk categories — notably antimalarials and antibiotics, whether imported or made locally — carry a scratch panel hiding a one-time PIN that consumers text to a short code. Marketing authorisation holders must notify NAFDAC and use approved MAS providers, and a foreign manufacturer needs a registered Nigerian representative to hold the product registration.

VerifyGuard is not a NAFDAC-approved MAS provider, and does not replace that obligation. It is a brand-owned layer that runs alongside a national scheme: you keep the scan data, the clone and diversion intelligence, and the consumer reports, rather than seeing only what a regulator's scheme returns. The same is true of government excise stamps, which are tax instruments and prove duty was paid, not that the contents are yours.

Getting started

1. 1Tell us the products, the destination markets, and your monthly pack volume.
2. 2We set up the products and generate a pilot batch, which downloads as print-ready files for your existing label printer or packaging supplier.
3. 3Run the pilot on one line or one export consignment, then review the first scan map with our team.
4. 4Scale up, and add field market checks in the destination country if you need evidence for enforcement.