Value Chain Academy
Deployment planning for learning programs across Sub-Saharan Africa
The challenge:
One of the main challenges in healthcare within LMICs (Low- and Middle-Income Countries) is the significant gap between recorded deliveries of medicines and their actual availability to end patients.
According to studies from Sub-Saharan Africa, only 55–65% of medicines from verified suppliers reach the target population (WHO, 2017).
This opens the door for fake medicines, with up to 30% of medicines in sub-Saharan Africa being substandard (due to storage and transport issues) or falsified. Trafficked medical products kill almost half a million Sub-Saharan Africans every year.
Until the pandemic, Novartis had been delivering in-person value chain and supply programs across the region.
My role was to build a deployment plan for the move to fully virtual online courses so that a new program manager could take the reins and lead the program successfully.
The solution:
I designed an implentation process in five main phases:
Discover: Exploration and initial research
Design: Preparation, planning and designing the program
Implement: Execution and program delivery
Monitor: Tracking progress, participation, and social impact
Review: Evaluating outcomes, analysing success factors and barriers
I used tools such as:
RACI matrix: Defining clear roles and responsibilities
PESTLE & SWOT analysis: Assesing local adaptation, opportunities, and challenges
Change Overview: Setting program goals
Risk management: Identifying and mitigating potential risks
The result:
The research emphasised the need for local customisation to address specific challenges such as technological limitations, workforce shortages, and substandard medicine issues.
The Program Manager has now successfully run several cohorts of the program in Ghana and Botswana since 2022.
The importance of deployment planning and the analysis of local contexts is reflected in the high completion rate of the cohorts e.g. Botswana (59%) and Ghana (65% in 2025), despite many of the learners being extremely busy medical professionals. The deployment plan provided a scalable, replicable model that fosters sustainable improvements in LMIC healthcare systems, with measurable impacts on medicine quality and patient safety.
Future Application:
The program’s methodology was adapted for deployment in other LMICs, with implementation in the Philippines, marking its first outreach in Asia in 2025.