Accenture and Amref Health Africa to Improve Healthcare Services for Hundreds of Thousands Across Africa

LONDON Mar. 12, 2015 /3BL Media/ – Accenture and the Accenture Foundations have awarded Amref Health Africa an additional grant of US$3 million to help the organization enhance and scale its mobile health training program to 3,000 community health workers in Kenya. This grant brings Accenture’s direct support to Amref Health Africa to more than US$7.3 million since 2005.
 
This grant is a part of Accenture’s corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which is equipping more than 700,000 people around the world with the skills to get a job or build a business. The M-PESA Foundation has provided an additional US$1.5 million in funding.
 
Community health workers play a critical role in providing healthcare services to communities, but lack the training and support to deliver them effectively. Accenture’s two-year grant will enable Amref Health Africa to expand its Health Enablement and Learning Platform (HELP) – which provides community health workers with flexible, mobile access to skills training and support tools – and has the potential to improve healthcare services for hundreds of thousands of people across Africa.
 
Piloted in 2013, HELP is a mobile health learning platform developed in partnership with Vodacom-Mezzanine’s Helium platform, and Safaricom – a Vodafone affiliate in Kenya. HELP builds on Vodafone’s mhealth portfolio which, developed with its network of global partnerships, increases access to healthcare services through its customer reach and scalable mobile health solutions. Vodafone and Safaricom will continue to provide scalability and mobile solution expertise with technology partner Mezzanine.
 
“Through this collaborative partnership, we are leveraging technology and delivering measurable solutions that will make a profound impact across sub-Saharan Africa,” said Jill Huntley, managing director, Global Corporate Citizenship, Accenture. “By harnessing the power of mobile, Amref Health Africa is delivering job and medical skills training at speed and scale – a critical component in improving the health as well as the long-term economic sustainability of communities in Africa.”
 
“African countries are facing a severe shortage of healthcare workers who are able to provide support for communities in need. Providing in-depth, high-quality skills training via mobile devices will help develop the capacity and confidence of community health workers,” said Dr. Lennie Bazira Igbodipe-Kyomuhangi, interim CEO, Amref Health Africa. “By working together to scale HELP, we will support more community health workers with ongoing training, supervision and defined career paths that, in turn, benefit the health of their communities.”
 
“Through this cross-sector partnership, we will further increase the number of healthcare workers to deliver the health services needed to support their communities,” said Les Baillie, M-PESA Foundation executive director. “We’re actively building the foundation for a long-term, scalable and sustainable solution that will improve the lives of many people in Kenya, and ultimately, across Africa.”
 
About Accenture  
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 319,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. Through its Skills to Succeed corporate citizenship initiative, Accenture is equipping more than 700,000 people around the world with the skills to get a job or build a business. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
 
About Amref Health Africa
Amref Health Africa is an international African not-for-profit organization headquartered in Nairobi founded as the Flying Doctor Service of East Africa in 1957. Amref Health Africa’s vision is for lasting health change in Africa: communities with the knowledge, skills and means to maintain their good health and break the cycle of poor health and poverty. With a focus on women and children, Amref Health Africa works with the most vulnerable African communities to achieve lasting health change. Amref Health Africa reaches over 35 countries, with country or regional offices in seven countries and a staff of over 1,000. Amref Health Africa provides training and consulting support across various countries in Africa and to date has trained over 600,000 health workers of all cadres using a range of approaches, including the use of technologies such as electronic learning and mobile learning. www.amref.org.
 
About Vodafone
Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 54 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2014, Vodafone had 444 million mobile customers and 11.8 million fixed broadband customers. For more information, please visit: www.vodafone.com.
 
About Safaricom
Safaricom transforms lives. We provide voice, data, financial services and enterprise solutions for a range of subscribers, small businesses and government, using a variety of platforms. As the biggest communication company in East and Central Africa, Safaricom delights over 21 million subscribers, providing over 200,000 touch points for its customers and offering over 100 different products under its portfolio. With annual revenues in excess of Kshs 100 Billion, Safaricom invested Kshs 27.78 billion in infrastructure this year, providing over half of Kenya’s population with 3G coverage and providing 2G coverage to 90% of Kenyans. Safaricom harnesses its proprietary fibre infrastructure, and is in the process of building a dedicated enterprise business to provide managed services to clients in the East African region. Safaricom pioneered commercial mobile money transfer globally through M-PESA, the most successful such service anywhere in the world.  Launched in March 2007 as a money transfer service, M-PESA now has over 19 million customers and over 81,000 Agent outlets countrywide.
 
About M-PESA FOUNDATION
Registered as a charitable trust in 2010, the M-PESA Foundation provides grants for the implementation of large-scale, long-term projects in the areas of health, environmental conservation, education and integrated water projects. To date, the M-PESA Foundation has implemented a range of maternal health projects in partnership with Amref Health Africa, and several other partners; bio diversity conservation in the Nairobi National Park and the Mau Eburu Ecosystem; major infrastructural improvements for Starehe Girls Centre, a leading girls school that focuses on providing educational opportunities for bright girls from needy backgrounds and Kenya Red Cross Society, to implement an integrated water project in Kwale County. The Foundation also supports initiatives that integrate technology for good.  
 
About Mezzanine
Mezzanine is a subsidiary of Vodacom, based out of the Vodacom Business Africa hub in Johannesburg. Mezzanine is managed by a team of dedicated engineers and business analysts that have been working together for the last eight years to create solutions for mobile health and agriculture in Africa. Mezzanine delivers access to a range of mobile business services by leveraging the communication infrastructure made available by mobile network companies across Africa. Partnering with in-country mobile network companies enables Mezzanine to deliver enterprise services beyond those available from traditional ICT systems. Mezzanine currently powers deployments in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania.
 
 
Contact:
 
Sam Hyland
Accenture
+ 917 452 5184
samuel.hyland@accenture.com