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Dateline Global: Into Africa
E-learning, Kenyan nurses and Atlanta, and why Accenture is the common link
by Dianne Bernez
September 30, 2008
S
ome corporations talk about being globally conscious. Then there are others, like
Accenture, who walk the talk. Last June, the company announced a $2.9 million donation (which
includes $1.7 million from the Accenture Foundations and $1.2 million in-kind consulting and
services leveraging the company's electronic learning expertise) to the African Medical and
Research Foundation (AMREF), and sent Stephanie Runyan, an Atlanta-based senior manager, to spend
four months in Kenya piloting an e-learning training program to significantly increase the number
of qualified nurses in the country through the Accenture Development Partnership Program. This
first-of-its-kind e-learning training program is expected to run for five years.
In Kenya, given the current shortage of nursing instructors and
infrastructure, it has been estimated that the need to upgrade 26,000 nurses from certificate to
diploma level would take about 100 years. "Community level nurses account for about 90 percent of
Kenya's nursing staff and are the backbone of the healthcare system because there's only one doctor
for every 100,000 patients," Runyan says.
However, research by AMREF and Accenture shows more than 85 percent of Kenyan nurses are
under-qualified for the job and have not been trained to handle new and re-emerging diseases such
as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria (the leading cause of child morbidity and mortality in
Africa).
Runyan took the assignment in stride. Because she had spent a month in 2004 volunteering in
Tanzania with a community-based HIV youth organization (not affiliated with Accenture), she was
familiar with the culture.
"English is spoken a lot because Kenya was once a British colony, but it's still a tribal
society and you need to remember that," Runyan says. "I knew some Swahili phrases, always useful as
an ice-breaker, but it wasn't difficult to be understood. There weren't any big communications
issues in Nairobi because everyone has a cell phone."
That's no exaggeration. In Kenya, cell phones are the primary means of contact because of
the scarcity of traditional telephone lines. While there were ongoing computer outages because of
constant power fluctuations, Runyan had daily Internet access (Nairobi is eight hours ahead of
Eastern Standard time).
"It was great to be able to send instant messages to my parents," she laughs. "The only time
I got really homesick was during the Georgia-Tennessee university home game where I didn't have
anyone to celebrate with on Georgia's victory. But there I was, driving in downtown Nairobi and saw
a man walking down a street with a Georgia Bulldog cap on. I jumped out of the car and he became my
instant buddy because he'd actually attended Georgia State and was thrilled to learn of Georgia's
win!"
Runyan is proud of her affiliation with Accenture and says, "It's one thing to give money,
but this is a unique program that really taps the skill-set of its employees ...(a lot of
developing countries need a transfer of skills)... and that was a main part of my job - to build
the capability of the AMREF staff and help them learn how to build and manage projects so they
didn't have to depend on Accenture to maintain the program."
Runyan clearly has a global mindset. In August 1994, after completing graduate school, she
lived for nine months in the city of Barnaul (pop: 800,000), in the middle of Siberia, teaching
conversational English at a university and doing missionary work with a local church.
"The world is the same all around," she says. "We have different cultures and our
experiences are vastly different, but at the end of the day we are the same and I have loved living
these experiences. It's made my ability to connect globally very deep and I know my skills can be
used for good anywhere to help people."
