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Case Study
Responsible Business

Amref Health Africa

Learn how Accenture Development Partnerships positively impacts the lives of thousands in rural Kenya.

Challenge

With headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, Amref Health Africa (Amref) is a global health non-governmental organization (NGO) with 22 offices globally and 35 program countries in Africa. The organization is committed to improving the health of people in Africa by partnering with and empowering communities, and strengthening health systems.

By 2035, there will be an estimated global shortfall of 12.9 million skilled health professionals in Africa. Community health workers are vital to addressing this gap by providing basic healthcare and education services directly to families and community members—serving as a crucial link between communities and formal health systems. However, training these workers via traditional face-to-face methods poses a number of challenges, including high costs, geographic reach, poor long-term engagement, high attrition rates and an inability to rapidly mobilize health workers in times of crisis.

What Accenture did

To overcome these challenges, Amref sought to develop a new mobile health learning platform built using basic mobile phone technology.

Accenture worked with Amref to create a unique cross-sector partnership comprising Amref Health Africa, Accenture, the Kenyan Ministry of Health, M-Pesa Foundation, Safaricom, and Mezzanine.

The combined world-class expertise and funding resulted in a leading mobile health learning application known as “LEAP,” designed for basic mobile phones which are ubiquitous in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"Accenture Development Partnerships have been a key partner in developing and scaling our market leading mHealth learning platform."

— DIANA MUKAMI, eHealth Program Manager – Amref Health Africa

Value delivered

The LEAP application allows community health workers access to continued training through their mobile device. It also helps them engage in peer learning through social media, strengthen supervision through direct access to supervisors, and updates and campaign messages to rapidly mobilize and respond to outbreaks.

The project has achieved a number of key milestones including:

  • Three thousand community health workers in Kenya have been trained.
  • Over 300,000 households across Kenya have benefited from the improved knowledge and services of their community health workers.

Accenture Development Partnerships also played a crucial role in developing the social enterprise strategy to deliver sustainable long-term growth. It is expected to deliver over $4.5 million in revenue. Amref’s mobile platform is intended to be transformed into a commercially viable social enterprise that can be adopted by other organizations requiring health worker training, and in doing so provide a new sustainable revenue stream for Amref.

Outcomes

28%

increase in antenatal visits

28%

increase in the number of infants younger than one year fully immunized

24%

increase in skilled maternal delivery

Related capabilities

Accenture Development Partnerships

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