Principal Investigator of Africa Health Collaborative, KNUST in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, Prof. Ellis Owusu-Dabo, has outlined the Collaborative’s vision for leveraging data to improve health outcomes across the continent.
“Africa Health Collaborative, in its ten-year journey will produce a lot of data. And these data must inform better primary healthcare outcomes in our various countries. Let’s ask ourselves these questions? How will we monitor all these activities? How will we measure the progress being made? What about Impact? What would we have learned from these programmes? And how different will we see the continent of Africa?
“Indeed, we stand at the intersection of data and decision-making, where the insights we derive from our work can lead to meaningful change in our communities and organizations,” he said.
Prof. Owusu-Dabo who is the chairperson of the Africa Health Collaborative’s Executive Steering Committee was speaking at the second annual workshop on Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Adaptation (MELA) workshop in Kumasi, Ghana.
The MELA workstream engages all ten members of the Health Collaborative including the Mastercard Foundation to ensure alignment with the Foundation’s Impact Strategy. The first Co-creation workshop was held in Cape Town, South Africa on October 11-12, 2023, alongside the first annual convening.
The Workshop included representation selected from across all members of the Health Collaborative and across the three pillars (HEMP, HENT and HECO). The MELA workshop was designed to be interactive and used a co-creation and consultative approach.
The two-day workshop which marks the official opening of the 2nd Africa Health Collaborative Convening on October 23 will focus on tracking progress and fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Prof. Owusu-Dabo added, “The conference will also explored effective strategies for monitoring and evaluation, sharing best practices and resources and engaging in collaborative discussions.”
Katherine Beaumont, Senior Director, Global Learning Opportunities and International Student success, University of Toronto will lead the discussions.
About the Convening
Annually, the Africa Health Collaborative brings together key stakeholders from Africa and beyond to collectively address shared health-sector challenges through a network approach. The annual convening also seeks to engage relevant health ecosystem partners and youth in knowledge exchange and to deepen the collaborations among partner institutions within the Higher Education Health Collaborative.
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana is hosting the 2024 Annual Convening of Africa Health Collaborative from the October 21 to 25.
