Securing the Journey of Medicines — From Manufacturer to Patient
Medicines that are diverted, expired, or simply unavailable when needed cost lives. Traceability — the ability to track pharmaceutical products across every step of the supply chain, from manufacturer to point of care — is Nigeria’s strategic response to a supply chain that has long been fragmented and vulnerable.
Nigeria’s Traceability Journey
Nigeria’s commitment to pharmaceutical traceability took formal shape in 2019, when the Federal Ministry of Health and NAFDAC convened a landmark national workshop that produced the Nigeria National Pharmaceutical Traceability Strategy — a five-year implementation roadmap built on globally recognised GS1 Standards. Since then, implementation has advanced steadily across policy, technology, and stakeholder engagement.
On the regulatory side, NAFDAC published a Pharmaceutical Products Traceability Regulation in October 2024, providing the legal framework for phased compliance. A Memorandum of Understanding with GS1 Nigeria formalised a partnership for training, capacity building, and deployment support. Technologically, the NAFDAC Traceability Information System (TIS) and the Scan2Verify mobile application now form the operational backbone of the programme — enabling health workers to scan GS1-compliant 2D DataMatrix codes, verify product authenticity against the NAFDAC Green Book, and capture custody-change events in real time. Over 965 Android-enabled mobile scanners are deployed across states and healthcare facilities nationwide. Traceability training has reached over 2,500 healthcare personnel across Nigeria between 2022 and 2025, with more planned for 2026. Nigeria is also actively engaged globally, participating in the Global Verification and Traceability Initiative (VTI), the TRVST vaccine verification system, and continental meetings to advance traceability adoption across African countries.
From Pilots to Programme: A Phased Rollout
Nigeria’s traceability implementation has been advanced through a deliberate series of pilots, each building on lessons from the last. The COVID-19 Traceability Pilot, conducted between March 2021 and June 2022, was the first major real-world test of the system — commissioning over one million product packs and scanning hundreds of thousands across 358 locations nationwide. This established the operational and data infrastructure on which subsequent phases have been built. A phased expansion then followed, progressively covering additional product categories including HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria commodities and Narcotics across supply chain tiers in line with the national implementation roadmap.
Spotlight: The MNCH+N Traceability Pilot
The current and most significant active phase is the Maternal, Newborn, Child Health and Nutrition (MNCH+N) Pilot, commenced in 2025 under the NAFDAC Pharmaceutical Products Traceability Regulation. The pilot extends pack-level traceability to some of the most critical and vulnerable commodities in Nigeria’s public health system — medicines and supplies for antenatal care, childhood illness, nutrition interventions, and emergency obstetric care. With rollout actively underway, the pilot is onboarding manufacturers, accelerating serialization, and working towards full end-to-end supply chain visibility for MNCH+N products. When fully realised, it will enable Nigeria to detect diversion, anticipate stockouts, intercept expired products, and ensure that life-saving medicines reliably reach the mothers, newborns, and children who need them most.
