Riders for Health's future plans for health care systems in Africa

Future plans for health care systems in Africa

Riders for Health have achieved a great deal in the last twenty years; we manage over 1,300 vehicles providing access to health care for over 10 million men, women and children.

However, the entire continent of Africa is in need of predictable, reliable and cost-effective transportation to mobilise health workers who have hundreds of kilometres to travel between rural communities. Riders has created a system that has the potential to take part in bringing about real change to the health of the people of Africa.

Our current objectives are to continue expanding our work, in both existing programmes and new countries, to provide access to health care for a further 15 million people across Africa by the end of 2015. We will develop our ability to do detailed monitoring and evaluation of our work so that we can show Riders impact and make sure our programmes are always at their most effective. Riders will also continue to promote the importance of transport infrastructure in health care systems.

Riders’ models are designed so they can be quickly reproduced and our replications team can copy a model that we know works effectively and establish it in a new country with ease.

Lloyd Chipere is our replications manager. Lloyd joined Riders as a technician before becoming programme director for Zambia. He works with our replications director, Alfred Gonga, who has plenty of experience establishing new programmes as he helped to set up Riders in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Riders has added two new members to the team who will assist our growth by developing new partnerships. Lakshmi Karan’s role as global strategy director will be to build relationships with potential large-scale investors in America. Kameko Nichols joins us as partnership director. She will focus on the continued development of our relationships with ministries of health and non-government organisations in African countries.

Riders’ goals between now until 2015 are to:

1. Establish new and larger-scale partnerships with health-providing organisations. Expand our operations into at least two additional counties in sub-Saharan Africa.
2. Enable local health workers to provide health care access to 25 million people living in the poorest rural African communities.
3. Manage 4,000 vehicles for our health care delivery partners.
4. Build the capacity of Riders’ existing programmes, implementing in-depth evaluation and monitoring to demonstrate the value and impact of our work.
5. Strengthen the core of Riders for Health to provide a strong platform for growth and sustainability.
6. Raise awareness of the importance of transportation in global health initiatives and create the expectation that vehicles should run for years without breaking down.

To find out how you can help us to reach these goals, click here for more information about the ways in which you can support our work.

If you would like additional information on Riders’ plans for the future, then please contact us.