Our Iftar Celebration

eHealth Africa is a team of people from diverse cultures, educational backgrounds, and experiences, united by the desire to build stronger health systems across Africa.

One of our values at eHealth Africa is ownership—we work hard to become embedded in the fabric of the communities which we work in and we invest our time, ideas and resources to ensure that the quality of life in those communities is improved.

This week, our staff in Kano and Abuja hosted an Iftar celebration for members of neighboring communities. Iftar breaks the daylong fast that Muslims must observe during the month of Ramadan. eHA staff came together to distribute food packs and clothes to over 500 people in Kano and 200 people in Abuja. Our aim was to give back to the communities that we live and work in.

Here are pictures from the event in Kano. Ramadan Kareem!

eHA Staff at our Kano office preparing the Iftar packs

Lots of food and drinks to share

Iftar packs ready to go!

Some staff at our Kano office getting ready to distribute packs

Our Director, Finance and Administration joins the picture

Servers in line!!

The distribution begins in Kano

Calling our comrades to Iftar

The last few packs are distributed

A thumbs up for the eHA team

Zahir Baloum, Director, Finance and Administration and Hawa Kombian, Chief of Staff, grant an interview

My Internship at eHealth Africa Helped me Find my Path

My name is Juliana Jacob and I am a Helpdesk associate with the IT Engineering and Operations team.  I studied Mass Communication at Kogi State University and I am currently studying to earn my Masters in Public Relations at Bayero University, Kano. Up until January 2018 when I became an intern with the Helpdesk/ Network Operating Center at eHealth Africa, all I could think about was pursuing a career that would put me in the limelight and make me a household name.

Everything changed during my National Youth Service year in 2016. I worked at the Nassarawa Broadcasting Service (NBS) as a Radio/TV presenter but I had the opportunity to participate in a project as a data collector/ enumerator. I visited settlements in very remote and hard-to-reach locations and saw first-hand the deplorable state of health care in those communities. Many health facilities were dilapidated and had no vaccines or medicines. I decided there and then that I had to play my own part to improve healthcare for the people in such communities.

Someone told me about an eHealth Africa internship placement. I was immediately interested because eHA was a NGO and I knew it would give me the opportunity to touch lives in some way. I am not sure what I expected but when I found out that I would be placed with the Helpdesk/ Network Operating Center, I was worried. I didn’t see any similarities between my background in Mass Communications or my prior experience as an on-air person and working in Information Technology (IT). I had very little knowledge about IT or what it entailed, prior to this internship. My only experience with IT was a course that I took as an undergraduate student.

My time as an intern was the most challenging experience of my adult life but it was also the most enlightening. The Helpdesk is perhaps the busiest unit in the entire organization because it supports the delivery of all the projects in some capacity. We make sure that every team member has all the digital tools that they need to deliver their results. The helpdesk also functions as a customer call center and provides support, information, and solutions to eHA staff and partners. Working at the helpdesk helped me to internalize and exhibit the eHA values especially innovative problem-solving. In no time, I found that I had gained valuable skills such as interpersonal communications, and time and task management.

I have become familiar with IT terms and concepts—that I never thought I would encounter. I have fallen in love with IT and what is so amazing that I did not have an IT or tech background. Everything I know about IT and network operations, I learned from my team at eHealth Africa. Not only were they patient with me, but they also recommended several courses and seminars for my own personal development.

At first, I didn’t think that I could really be of any help to the communities with poor healthcare if I was not on the field or if I was not in the medical profession but my internship with the Helpdesk proved to me that everyone can do something to improve the quality of healthcare for vulnerable populations or communities. At eHealth Africa, everyone brings their strengths to the table and contributes their quota to achieve our mission and vision. We have staff who are not medical doctors or nurses but contribute to the improvement of health service delivery through their expertise in software development, logistics, construction or communications.

In February 2018, I became a full-time staff at eHA. One of the things I love most about eHealth Africa is that it focuses on applied knowledge rather than theoretical knowledge. To a large extent, what matters is getting the job done and not what you studied in school. This is why an intern with a Mass Communications background can become a full-time staff in one of the most technical fields in the organization.

My internship experience helped me to discover what I truly want to do career-wise. Even though my masters is in Public Relations, I have decided to pursue a career in IT. I am currently taking several online courses to attain some certifications in Information and Communications Technology (ICT). There are so many intersections between PR and ICT and I cannot wait to explore them.

I am truly grateful to my team and to eHA for this opportunity. If you are looking for an organization with bright, progressive people who are passionate about transforming health systems in Africa, eHA is definitely the place for you.

Meet the Team - Gift Ogbaje

Meet Gift Ogbaje, our “Director of First Impressions”. She is a security associate/ receptionist with the Operations unit at our Kano office in Nigeria.

She joined eHealth Africa 2 years ago. Gift’s primary responsibility is visitor management and she is the first person that our visitors meet when they walk through our doors. Gift takes this responsibility very seriously and has made a conscious effort to improve her interpersonal skills so that guests can feel welcome.

At eHA, our strongest asset is our people. Gift embodies our values here at eHA and has shown a remarkable aptitude for innovative problem solving by creating unique and workable solutions to problems within her team. One of her major successes was her simple solution to the traffic during on-site events with external participants. In place of the cumbersome process of generating and printing individual visitors tags, Gift created tags for the training which she could print ahead of time; as well as a register where each participant could enter their details. Her solution reduced the traffic by over 85% and made work much faster.

“At eHealth Africa, I am able to utilize my strengths such as accuracy and attention to detail, optimally. I collect and handle invoices from vendors, which I forward to the finance team for payments. My attention to detail aided by proper documentation has helped to reduce errors and delays in processing payments. I have also gained new skills in time management and multitasking which enable me to perform multiple tasks efficiently, without getting flustered.”

— Gift Ogbaje

We are proud to have Gift as part of our team, if you’re ever visiting our office in Kano, be sure to say a warm hello.

Much Ado about Monitoring & Evaluation?

By Emerald Awa- Agwu and Olayinka Orefunwa

Case Study

Thomas* has just received some feedback from donors to suggest that his organization may need to refund some of the funding it received. The donors feel that there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the project achieved its outcomes and overall objectives.

Thomas managed a three-year nutrition project, which aimed to combat malnutrition in children under the age of 5 by training local women and caregivers to produce nutritious meals for children from 6 months to 5 years using indigenous, locally available foods. He and his team conducted several activities including producing recipe manuals, organizing food demonstration classes, developing communication materials, and educating women on nutrition and hygiene issues.

Thomas believed that the project had achieved great results. Malnutrition rates had dropped and mothers in the community had a better knowledge of how to create nutritious, balanced meals with local foods in order to support the optimal growth and development of their children. He simply could not understand why the donors could not understand this. After a lot of back-and-forth conversations, the donors asked to see the Monitoring & Evaluation Framework for the project. Thomas and his team had never created one.

What is Monitoring & Evaluation?

Over the last decade, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes have become an important source of knowledge management and organizational learning in the development sector. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) are processes that help project managers like Thomas as well as donors and relevant partners to assess the performance of a project or organization. Monitoring is a systematic, continuous and long-term process of gathering information about a project’s progress towards its set objectives. Evaluation helps to determine if the project has, in fact, achieved its goals and delivered the expected outputs as planned.

Why is Monitoring & Evaluation Important?

As we saw from the case study, neglecting M &E can have dire consequences. It is important to factor it in from the inception of the project. Best practices in programming and project management suggest that an equivalent of 5% - 15% of the overall project budget should be allocated to M &E.  Here are a few reasons why organizations and project managers should have a strong M & E framework in place.

1. M & E is relevant for donors to assess the quality of project implementation. In the development sector, an M &E framework is required by donors for them to gauge how reliable an organization is as a partner, before considering them for future collaborations and opportunities.

2. Together, M&E help to keep track of how efficiently projects are implemented (with regards to using resources and inputs) or how effective the programs are. This is extremely valuable for project managers like Thomas because it helps them ensure that donor funds are being used judiciously to get the best value for money.

3. M&E is also important for identifying challenges and gaps so that changes can be made as needed.

4. It allows teams to learn from each other’s experiences, and to build on expertise and knowledge.

At eHealth Africa, M & E is led by our Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research (MER) team and is built into projects from the inception to close out. The MER team supports project managers across the organization to develop solid M & E frameworks that guide project delivery according to laid down standard operating procedures. Apart from their internal quality assurance functions within projects, our MER team supports eHA’s efforts to contribute to public health research.

The team provides research services to organizations including universities and implementing partners to conduct qualitative and quantitative studies on a wide range of areas.  In addition, eHA’s MER team provides third-party monitoring services for humanitarian organizations so that they can have a true picture of the quality and impact of their interventions. Recently, our MER team provided technical leadership in a baseline data survey for the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). The survey aimed to gather data relating to perceptions and practices relating to sexual and reproductive health among males and females of reproductive age in Kaduna, Katsina and Kano states.  Over the course of three years, CHAI will support the state governments of Kaduna, Kano, and Katsina to increase contraceptive prevalence rates and utilization of reproductive health services, which should lead to reduced rates of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The increased use of family planning, in addition to sustained gains in the provision of quality emergency obstetric services, should lead to a further reduction in the number of maternal deaths in the same time period.

To effectively achieve this goal, a clear understanding of current levels of knowledge on reproductive health was required. First, as a baseline against which program outcomes can be measured at the end of the project, but more importantly, as a basis for which strategies for program intervention can be designed and delivered. eHealth Africa trained the data collectors to use Android-based digital applications such as ODK to collect data across 70 LGAs and supervised the data collection process.

eHealth Africa staff including MER lead, Yinka Orefunwa visit Soba LGA in Kaduna State to conduct data quality assessments for the CHAI survey

Overall, to avoid scenarios like the one in our case study, organizations need to recognize Monitoring and Evaluation as a necessary component to ensure the quality of their project execution and the accuracy of their outcomes. M&E ensures visibility and accountability as donors, implementing partners and relevant stakeholders will have adequate information about successes, challenges and even changes made in the course of the project.