The Africa Resource Centre for Supply Chain (ARC), Nigeria, is collaborating with academic institutions such as, the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), University of Lagos (Unilag), Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU), Awka and Lagos State University (LASU) to foster educational and research capacities on supply chain management.
Among other things, the collaborations are aimed at strengthening existing programs or establishing new supply chain management degree and certificate programs, through curriculum strengthening, faculty exchanges, joint research projects, student internships, and so on.
Speaking at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding betweeen ARC Nigeria and these academic institutions, Mrs. Azuka Okeke, Regional Director, ARC Nigeria revealed that the organisation is raising the performance of health supply chains to increase the availability of medicines and health commodities at the last mile – through capacity enhancements of public health logisticians, supply chain process improvements, among others.
According to her, a major focus area of ARC Nigeria is to support effective development of local talent pools adequately trained to manage and operate public health supply chain and logistics systems, as well as for private sector supply chain systems in Nigeria and subsequently within West-Africa.
“ARC seeks to foster a supply chain revolution in Nigeria by facilitating local and international partnerships to foster in-country capacity for sustainable supply chain Education, research and Innovation. We are fostering more partnerships with universities across the country within the next three years with the aim of sustainably increasing in the number of adequately trained professionals with practical skills ready to make impact in public health and private sector supply chain systems in Nigeria,” Okeke revealed.
She continued “ARC Nigeria’s medium to long term plan to spur development of local talent involves setting up a premier academic Center of Excellence on supply chain in partnership with local and international universities to ensure even distribution and promotion of supply chain knowledge and research across Nigeria. To this end, the ARC is also partnering with the Massachusetts Institute Technology’s Centre of Transport Logistics, MIT CTL, a leading global institute on supply chain management education and research, with proven track-record in setting up supply chain excellence centers around the world, connected through the MIT Global SCALE Network. “
The Africa Resource Centre, ARC Nigeria, was conceived as partnership between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) – as a central resource center to foster, mobilize and channel expertise and capacity within the private sector and academia to strengthen public health supply chains across the country.
Since December 2016, the ARC has initiated collaborations with several private sector companies to facilitate transfer of supply chain expertise to strengthen public health supply chain systems. Worthy of note are successful collaborations that the ARC facilitated between Proctor & Gamble, UPS, Fidson Pharma and the National Warehousing Advisory Council (NWAC) under the Federal Ministry of Health and National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) respectively.
Currently, Nigeria ranks low on logistics competence evidenced from the World Bank’s 2016 Logistics Performance Index (LPI) report, which ranks Nigeria within the bottom 2 quintiles, characterized by very low availability of skilled logisticians, especially in mid-level management roles, a development which ARC Nigeria is working assiduously to reverse the ugly trend through its innovative solutions.
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