A Disruptive Innovation Model for Indigenous Medicine Research: A Nigerian Perspective

Non-availability of affordable medicines remains a recurring theme in the healthcare sector of countries in the South where it hampers drug compliance and creates an ambience for continued morbidity and mortality. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have attempted to remedy this situation via developing drugs from indigenous pharmacopeia; however, their efforts have yielded only a collection of one-off success stories due to a prevailing climate of economic, infrastructural and technological constraints. Using Nigeria as a case example, this paper argues that the core issues plaguing pharmaceutical innovation in developing countries go beyond existing constraints but revolve around an inability to evolve viable frameworks vis-à-vis scientific validation as well as failure on the part of researchers (in the course of conducting their research) and policy makers (in formulating and implementing drug-related policies) to reckon with the local reality. On this note, this paper explores a disruptive innovational framework (DIM) for stimulating extant and novel drug development based on phytomedicinal epistemic currents. Ultimately, this would be helpful in distinguishing the good from the ugly, extricating the rational from the bulk of the irrational, preserving the useful and discarding the completely useless amidst indigenous medicinal knowledge.