Amref’s Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) was founded on the need to build capacity of Human Resources for Health, health organizations and systems through quality training and programming models leveraging innovation to improve health outcomes in Sub Saharan Africa ICD seeks to increase the number and skills mix of mid-level and community level Health workers. This will be achieved through building and testing innovative HRH models for education and training incorporating eLearning and mLearning, generating evidence influence policy for for Human Resources for Health (HRH), strengthening Leadership, Management and Governance (LMG) capacities for HRH, optimizing performance of HRH through mentorship and coaching programs as well as research and advocacy for productivity and retention. The institute provides a number of services in the area of Capacity Development, including: Curriculum and Content Development, Conversion of content into e/mLearning for open and distance learning, training for individuals & organisations, building and testing innovative teaching and learning models, Technical Assistance in learning infrastructure deployment, coaching and mentorship, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, Capacity Assessments, Project Management, relationship and partnership management, Business case development and modelling, advocacy, Proposal Writing and Fundraising.
Today, Amref Health Africa is actively implementing capacity development initiatives through innovative training methodologies such as eHealth and mHealth in over 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. ICD also supports HRH interventions to improve quality of pre and in-service training and faculty training. During the last 6 years, ICD has rolled out eLearning infrastructure to 34 nurse training colleges and 110 eLearning Centres located in health facilities across the Kenya, increasing access to training by over 1100%.
The Institute of Capacity Development seeks to:
Create: Design models/approaches which are locally responsive to the needs of communities but connected to global agendas
Replicate: Scale up the Amref Health Africa capacity development approaches across cadres and geographies in sub-Saharan Africa
Innovate: Explore the use of new technologies in capacity development for health and development
Publish: Document and disseminate lessons learned in the use of innovative capacity development approaches for health and development
Some of the initiatives currently running within the institute include;
