# Corporate Capture

In research economics, does the concentration of pharmaceutical sponsorship indicate corporate capture of Africa's clinical trial landscape? This audit evaluated lead sponsor identity for 23,873 African interventional trials using ClinicalTrials.gov sponsor metadata through March 2026. Investigators reported the top-five sponsor concentration ratio as the primary estimand for corporate influence. The five largest global pharmaceutical companies sponsored an estimated twenty-two percent of African trials, while foreign sponsors collectively accounted for over sixty-five percent of all registrations. Local African pharmaceutical industry sponsored fewer than three percent of trials, creating a total dependency on foreign corporate agendas for clinical innovation priorities. Placebo-controlled trials numbered 3,324 in Africa (14% of total) versus 33,931 in the United States (18%). These findings demonstrate that Africa's research agenda is set in corporate boardrooms rather than African public health institutions. Interpretation is limited by the classification of academic-industry partnerships as single-sponsor entries.

## References

1. Lang T, Siribaddana S. "Clinical trials have gone global: is this a good thing?" PLoS Med. 2012;9:e1001228.
2. Drain PK, et al. "Global migration of clinical trials." Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018;17:765-766.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/governance-justice/dashboards/corporate-capture.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/governance-justice/code/corporate-capture.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05