From pioneering CPACPI in 2025 to presenting the model before the global pharmacy community in Canada, ACPN is charting a new course for community pharmacy practice and primary healthcare delivery in Nigeria.
The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has taken its pioneering reform of community pharmacy practice from Nigeria to the global stage, presenting its Community Pharmacists Assessment and Career Progression Institute (CPACPI) framework at the 84th FIP World Congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Montreal, Canada.
The international presentation represents a major milestone in ACPN’s ongoing effort to transform community pharmacy practice, establish a structured career progression system and reposition community pharmacists as key contributors to primary healthcare delivery.
ACPN had in 2025 pioneered the establishment of CPACPI as a competency-based platform designed to assess, develop and advance the careers of community pharmacists—a bold intervention aimed at addressing the longstanding absence of a clear career progression pathway within community pharmacy practice.
A year later, the Nigerian model was presented before an international audience at the FIP World Congress held in Montreal from August 30 to September 2, 2026, under the theme: “One Health, One Pharmacy – Bridging Science, Practice, and Education.”
The landmark presentation was delivered on behalf of ACPN by its National Chairman, Pharm. Ambrose Igwekamma Ezeh, placing Nigeria’s community pharmacy reform initiative firmly within global discussions on the future of pharmacy practice, workforce development and healthcare delivery.
The congress brought together pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists, educators, healthcare professionals and industry leaders from across the world to examine emerging developments in pharmaceutical science, professional practice, education and healthcare systems.
Against that backdrop, ACPN used the global platform to demonstrate how Nigeria is seeking to move community pharmacy beyond the traditional role of medicine dispensing into a more structured, clinically driven and professionally progressive component of the healthcare system.
Speaking during the presentation, Ezeh said CPACPI was conceived not merely as an academic or professional initiative but as a deliberate strategy for building a resilient and sustainable healthcare workforce.
“Our mission through CPACPI is not merely to create an academic milestone, but to build a resilient, sustainable workforce capable of delivering world-class primary healthcare,” he said.
He explained that the initiative was developed in response to practical challenges confronting community pharmacists, including heavy operational demands, regulatory weaknesses, financial constraints and limited opportunities for structured professional advancement.
The research presented at the congress, titled “The Implementation Gap: Perceived Barriers and External Threats to Community Pharmacists’ Participation in a Career Advancement Scheme in Nigeria,” drew on responses from 182 practising community pharmacists across the country.
The study was conducted through the collaborative efforts of Iyeseun Asieba, Abdulmuminu Isah, Faith Ehi, Ngozi Udem, Kowam Raji, Charles Oluwaseyi and Chukwuemeka Ubaka, with contributions from CPACPI Lagos, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu.
Findings from the research identified workload pressures, limited practice time and the high cost of training and certification as major barriers preventing pharmacists from fully participating in structured professional development programmes.
Weak regulatory enforcement was also identified as the most significant systemic threat to community pharmacy practice, while illegal medicine outlets and growing competition from patent medicine vendors were listed among major concerns.
More than three-fifths of the respondents indicated that the demands of daily practice limited their ability to participate consistently in career advancement programmes.
The study further found that younger and mid-career pharmacists with fewer than 20 years of professional experience were more concerned about the financial burden of professional development than their more senior colleagues.
Ezeh said ACPN had moved beyond merely identifying the challenges by incorporating practical solutions into the CPACPI framework.
According to him, the association plans to introduce tiered and subsidised professional development grants to ease the financial burden on younger pharmacists.
Flexible and self-paced digital learning modules are also expected to enable practitioners acquire additional competencies without significantly disrupting patient care and daily practice.
The ACPN National Chairman also called for stronger collaboration among relevant agencies to tackle illegal medicine outlets and unaccredited vendors, stressing that effective enforcement was necessary to protect professional standards and improve patient safety.
At the centre of the CPACPI initiative is a five-band career progression structure designed to remove what ACPN describes as the traditional career ceiling confronting many community pharmacists.
Under the framework, practitioners can advance through five professional levels:
Band 1 – Community Pharmacist
Band 2 – Senior Community Pharmacist
Band 3 – Community Pharmacy Specialist
Band 4 – Community Pharmacy Senior Specialist
Band 5 – Community Pharmacy Consultant
Progression through the bands is based on measurable professional competencies, including specialised clinical care, mentorship, digital health integration and continuous quality improvement.
The framework seeks to replace career stagnation with a transparent and merit-based progression system in which competence, experience and continuous professional development determine advancement.
But ACPN’s ambition goes beyond career advancement.
The association is also pushing for the formal recognition of accredited community pharmacies as private-sector primary healthcare facilities.
“There is a pressing need for government authorities, policy-makers, and national health authorities to identify and designate qualified community pharmacies as official primary healthcare facility providers in the private sector,” Ezeh said.
He argued that community pharmacies remain among the most accessible points of healthcare for millions of Nigerians and should be more effectively integrated into the country’s primary healthcare architecture and health insurance system.
Such integration, according to ACPN, could expand access to healthcare services, improve patient outcomes and reduce pressure on overstretched public health facilities.
The CPACPI initiative has therefore grown beyond an internal professional development programme into a broader healthcare reform proposition with implications for workforce development, primary healthcare, Universal Health Coverage and medicine safety.
Its presentation at the FIP Congress also offered Nigeria an opportunity to demonstrate that innovative responses to healthcare workforce challenges can emerge from developing countries and potentially provide useful lessons for other health systems.
ACPN believes the Nigerian model could offer a pathway for other low- and middle-income countries seeking to maximise the contribution of community pharmacists to primary healthcare delivery.
Reflecting on the future of the initiative, Ezeh stressed that its long-term success would depend on strong collaboration among regulatory agencies, professional bodies, policymakers and other stakeholders.
“The long-term success of the CPACPI framework rests on our collective ability to bridge the gap between policy design and real-world execution,” he said.
He noted that regulatory backing, financial accessibility, reduced workload barriers and stronger enforcement of professional and market standards would be crucial to ensuring the initiative achieves lasting results.
From its pioneering introduction in Nigeria in 2025 to its global presentation at the FIP World Congress in Montreal in 2026, CPACPI has emerged as one of ACPN’s most significant professional reform initiatives.
For Nigeria, the development represents more than the creation of another professional institution.
It is an effort to redefine the career prospects of community pharmacists, establish measurable standards for professional excellence and reposition community pharmacies as critical pillars of a modern, accessible and clinically responsive primary healthcare system.
With its presentation in Montreal, ACPN has given international visibility to a Nigerian-led model that seeks to transform community pharmacy into a more structured, competency-driven and clinically impactful profession—demonstrating that solutions developed to address local healthcare challenges can also attract global attention.
