A month ago, I attended the African Development Conference hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School of Policy. The conference’s theme was, “Looking South – Moving Forward – Fostering Development collaboration within the Global South.” The main emphasis throughout the conference was private public partnerships, talent and resources for development within the African continent. The conference included panels on ICT, logistics, health, personal narratives, legal labyrinths, oil and mining. As a result attendees were from diverse professional backgrounds and seemed to share a common passion for development within Africa. The conference created a platform and environment that enabled discussions and partnership opportunities across sectors and within Africa. Intra-regional trade in Africa is estimated to be between 10% and 12% which is much lower than other continents, but is critical to African development.
Sitting in the first session of the conference it dawned on me that, over the past ten months I had been focusing entirely on global health issues somewhat in isolation of other ‘market forces’. Attending the conference gave me a different perspective on a possible way forward to achieve better health outcomes for the future of health in African countries in a sustainable and cost effective way. My perspective till then had been limited to activities within the global health space excluding other factors in the economy and environment which have a direct impact on health and healthcare.
I was also able to reflect on other sectors that have collaborated and what gains have come from such thought processes within the African context. An example that quickly came to mind was how mobile technology revolutionized availability of banking services in Africa. Africa is the second largest mobile technology market after Asia, with an average of 5% annual growth in mobile technology use. The telecommunications sector tapped into this growth to resolve challenges around traditional banking. This resulted in mobile banking hosted by various telecommunication network providers for example, Zimbabwe uses Ecocash hosted by Econet Wireless, whilst, South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya use M-Pesa hosted by Vodafone among many other service providers within the respective countries and the African continent.
Mobile banking has resolved challenges that an individual living in a resource limited settings could possibly face such as, transport fees to travel to the bank, high monthly bank charges and the availability of services limited to specific time periods. However, there is a striking similarity between challenges in the financial sector and the health care sector in Africa. I believe there are many other similarities in challenges and possibly solutions between the health sector and other sectors. For instance both logistics companies and healthcare organizations are affected in areas with poor roads. Logistics companies may fail to meet delivery deadlines and damage cargo on poor roads resulting in less profitability. On the other hand the healthcare provider may not be able to get medications delivered on time or blood samples transported to the nearest clinic on time, resulting in delayed treatment, which unfortunately in some cases may end in the demise of a patient.
I feel the health care sector in Africa is still catching up on harnessing the inventions of many other sectors including mobile technology. However, my hope for the future is that as development within Africa progresses across the sectors, main actors within healthcare will be able to take strategic steps to identify opportunities for partnership with others. And that the healthcare sector may utilize partnerships for the attainment of access to health and design long-term sustainable solutions to public health issues that communities face.