Empower, Equip and Elevate

The GE Africa Learning Advisory with Adan Mohamed Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Industrialisation and Enterprise Development

What you need to know:

  • Leadership Programmes: GE runs leadership programmes around the world, which target new and emerging talent to develop future leaders.
  • GE is determined to elevate the communities in which we operate by lending scale and resources to transformative ideas that have the potential to solve local challenges.
  • The Coalition is training, equipping and supporting 500 health workers across 47 primary health centres and will establish two Ebola Treatment Centres (one each in Liberia and Sierra Leone) at two District/County Hospitals.

GE’s approach with GE Kujenga is to empower people by building valuable skills, equip communities with new tools and technology, and elevate ideas that are helping to solve Africa’s challenges. GE Kujenga is based on three core pillars of activity – Empower, Equip and Elevate.

EMPOWER
GE is committed to empowering the communities in which it operates by providing skills training and developing leaders. This helps to develop strong workforces and create opportunities for further growth. By investing in people, we are ultimately investing in Africa. GE empowers communities through various initiatives:

Leadership Programmes: GE runs leadership programmes around the world, which target new and emerging talent to develop future leaders. Some of the programmes currently running in Africa are:

  • Financial Management Programme (FMP)

  • Operations Management Leadership Programme (OMLP)

  • Human Resources Leadership Programme (HRLP)

  • Experienced Commercial Leadership Programme (ECLP)

  • Commercial Leadership Programme (CLP)

  • Communications Leadership Development Programme (CLDP)

  • Edison Engineering Development Programme (EEDP)

  • Information Technology Leadership Programme (ITLP)

  • Early Career Development Programme (ECDP).

The ECDP identifies high-potential entry-level candidates across Africa and provides essential skills training and leadership training to prepare participants for successful careers in their chosen disciplines to become
leaders at GE, taking on various full-time roles, making a difference in Africa.

  • Partnership with the African Leadership Academy (ALA): To develop a future generation of African leaders, GE works with the ALA to create employment opportunities through its Finalist Camp & Scholars programme. GE has committed up to $5 million to this partnership, which will identify, develop and connect the next generation of African leaders. The programme provides training as well as internship and post-graduate employment opportunities.

  • GE Africa Learning Advisory Board: In December 2013, GE Africa launched the first GE Africa Learning Advisory Board, with a focus on local technical skills development. The Board brings together 20 members drawn from GE, Africa, Europe and North America with a primary focus on local technical and engineering skills development across Africa.

  • Investment in Calabar Tech: GE has partnered with Calabar Tech in Nigeria by investing in an upgrade of its facilities, equipment, instructor training and curriculum. This school is training students in areas of strategic importance to Nigeria’s economic development such as process engineering, as well as, in higher vocational skills, such as machining, welding and assembly.

  • Supplier Development: GE Africa operates a supplier development programme for local companies that have been identified as having capabilities that are aligned to our engineering services needs. The programme focuses on developing and expanding their technical and managerial capabilities through skills development and technology transfer. Currently, there are four Nigerian companies participating in this programme. This initiative is in line with GE’s commitment to empowering small and medium-scale enterprises in Africa.

EQUIP
GE uses its expertise and technological track record to bring tools, technology and training to communities, strengthen rural healthcare provision and respond in times of natural disasters.

Some of the initiatives include:

  • Developing Health Globally: GE places a particular emphasis on improving healthcare for mothers and children, as part of the global efforts to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 targeted at maternal
    and newborn health. GE’s Developing Health Globally programme, operates in nine countries in Africa, and also improves surgical care and provides equipment to these communities.

  • Additionally, GE, in partnership with the GE Foundation, has committed $61 million to date to a range of healthcare projects, including ImPACT Africa, a programme that assists in the delivery of safe surgery
    in rural Western Kenya. The programme runs in partnership with Kenya’s Ministry of Health, among other partners. This project focuses primarily on developing training programmes that can lower surgical mortality rates, as well as improve anaesthetic care.

  • Healthymagination® : This is a GE business model that addresses one of the toughest challenges in the world: access to healthcare in rural settings. The Ifakara Health Institute, in Tanzania, is one of our core external partners in addressing Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. GE provides Ifakara with portable ultrasound devices and trains the midwives and nurses that will be used by midwives and nurses on how to use it to assess the well-being of pregnant women in rural areas of Tanzania. The project has increased healthcare reach in rural areas and offers a cost-effective and simple method to track maternal health indicators.

  • Ebola: In October 2014, the GE Foundation donated $2 million to help launch a coalition led by Partners in Health and Last Mile Health to scale-up Ebola response efforts and rebuild rural primary health systems in
    Liberia. Partners in Health will also be working with Wellbody Alliance and other private Africa Leadership Academy sector partners on a broader response effort in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Together, the Coalition will partner with the Liberian and Sierra Leonean ministries of health to execute the project in four rural counties/districts Grand Gedeh, Rivercess and Nimba Counties in Liberia and Kono District in Sierra Leone, reaching one million people.

The Coalition is training, equipping and supporting 500 health workers across 47 primary health centres and will establish two Ebola Treatment Centres (one each in Liberia and Sierra Leone) at two District/County Hospitals.

In addition, the Coalition will train and support 800 community health workers to carry out community-based education, prevention, surveillance and monitoring, and maintain essential health services in 500 villages.

The Coalition will also provide technical assistance to ministries of health at national level to support transition from Ebola response to strengthen health systems for the future.

ELEVATE
At GE, innovation is at the heart of everything we do. GE is determined to elevate the communities in which we operate by lending scale and resources to transformative ideas that have the potential to solve local challenges. GE supports entrepreneurs in developing new technologies and approaches to tackle local problems, and fund research into new solutions, with a particular focus on energy. Some of the initiatives
include:

  • Partnership with Burn Manufacturing: GE has been supporting the BURN Manufacturing Co. (BMC) in its Cookstoves Project in Kenya, in partnership with Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). The Cookstoves are inexpensive, durable, highly-efficient, lifesaving and environmentally friendly. GE has committed $1 million to the development of the project, which has supported the construction of a manufacturing facility in Kenya, as well as satellite facilities in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

  • Distributed Power University Challenge: In Kenya, GE sponsors the Distributed Power University Challenge Award to identify and reward projects that provide power for local communities. This offers young designers and innovators the opportunity to connect with industry partners that can help turn their projects into reality, and to improve local communities.

  • GE & USADF Off-Grid Energy Challenge: GE Africa in partnership with the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) runs the Power Africa Off-Grid Energy Challenge.

The objective of this initiative is to promote innovative solutions that develop, scale up or extend proven technologies for off-grid energy — reaching communities not yet served by existing power grids.

Launched in 2013, the challenge has awarded 28 grants to small and medium enterprises that demonstrated new business to deliver sustainable, renewable energy to under-served, marginalised populations.