Vaka Health Foundation Information

VAKA Health Foundation is a capacity building social enterprise for healthcare workers across the continent. VAKA is a word widely understood across the African continent, which translates to ‘build or develop’. This action-based word reflects our values and ethos to building better, easily accessible healthcare in Africa. The foundation consists of nursing education professionals; health informatician, social entrepreneurs and philanthropists primarily with a common purpose of giving back and “VAKA”/build Africa and make it a better place through nursing education. Our lead product is the Nurses and Midwifery Guild of Africa, a platform whose singular mandate is empowerment of nurses and midwives across the continent, through the efficient and effective building of skills using appropriate scalable digital technology coupled with on-ground, in-country local presence. The Guild among other things provides services such as continuing professional development training (via mobile phones/tablet and PC), professional courses, entrepreneurial and research opportunities and grants. It also provides an opportunity for nurses and midwives to tell their stories to the world through podcasts and develop extensive professional networks. VAKA firmly believes that digital transformation requires the implementation of not only technological infrastructure but also the cultivation of a mindset that supports cultural change to technological solutions for a digital society and as such, we provide technical assistance for the implementation of our solution. The success of this product has provided the inspiration to go towards a more holistic site, covering the needs of health professionals in Africa, which has been developed using MOODLE, and is compliant with cybersecurity standards.