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Health Capacity Building project in South Africa |
Dear All,
It is HIGH time I contribute to this blog by telling you everything you never dared to ask about BTC bilateral Capacity Building project with the Department of Health of South Africa (DoH).
I arrived in Pretoria in July 2007 to work as a HRIMS (Human Resource Information Management System) project co-ordinator. Hopefully, after almost 9 months on the field, I am now able to tell you more about this mysterious code word, and about the unexpected (but awaited) turn my work here took.
BTC is involved in two Health projects in South Africa: “Expansion of TB/HIV/STI Prevention, Care and Support in South Africa” and “Capacity Building in the Department of Health”. As I have only been involved in the latter, I will try to present it without digressing too much, I promise.
The HR Capacity Building project has been divided into 5 Result Areas (or RA for those who like the REAL jargon):
- The first Result Area (RA1) is technical and has the objective to improve the HR management tools. A Technical Advisor has been appointed by BTC, and I was sent to Pretoria, in the Department of Health, in order to assist him on the project management and communication aspects between the Department and the service provider that has been selected to create an extensive work-force planning database. My time there has been very distressing, no other word could describe my feelings better. I will plainly say there were too many challenges, at all possible levels, but I will not go into the crunchy details you all die to know! Moreover, because of some delays experienced for the implementation of this Result Area, I started working on another result area, now and then.
- Eventually, my terms of reference changed and I started to officially work with Mirela, the project officer appointed to work on Result Areas 2&3. Those RAs have been combined and aim at improving skills amongst health practitioners and line managers in hospital that have been selected throughout the 9 provinces of South Africa. It is quite a unique approach as it is a team-based skills development programme (similar programmes usually tend to focus on the individuals).
Working on this result area has been really motivating, even exciting! I arrived right on time for the implementation of the soft skills trainings interventions in the hospitals. This means I assisted with the selection of the various service providers that would train the management teams of selected hospitals in diversity management, team building, stress management, people management, basic financial management, change management and strategic planning (as per the needs identified in the institutions). After that, I have been fully involved in all the daily tasks of this project: planning of trainings, communication with the various stakeholders, dealing with the most unexpected challenges, etc. And because so many trainings had been – and still have to be – scheduled in a short period of time, we have had very busy days. It has been really rewarding to work with Mirela, who took her work so seriously that she even taught me some Romanian – when I spoke of Diversity Management! Moreover, it has been such a good feeling to feel fully part of a huge team including the Department of Health, the service providers and BTC. I have also been lucky to be sent on the field in order to monitor some of the training interventions in the hospitals. This was a wonderful opportunity to really understand the importance of the project I am working for. It definitively helped grasping eventual challenges better, as I went back to the roots of the need and work realities of hospital staff. This really doubled up my motivation.
- RA4 has the purpose to develop leadership in HR planning. To do so, HR management members from the Department of Health have, for example, undertook study tours to UK and Belgium (University of Antwerp and Institute for tropical medicine). Currently, a trilateral cooperation between the governments of Belgium, Mozambique and South Africa is being considered to fight for the eradication of malaria.
- RA5 aims to support the improvement of skills development structures with the purpose to transform the sector into a learning environment. Different skill development facilitators from all provinces enrolled in different courses.
Common impacts of those different Result Areas are e.g. staff retention in hospital and in the Department of Health, and uplift the morale, productivity and performance skills of officials and beneficiaries. Tout un programme!
On a more (very) general note, living in South Africa has been really…how can I put it?… different from any experience I had before. The country is very developed, great tar roads even in the most remote areas, numerous luxurious malls (the consumption society is at its highest – or almost), yet the government is still young and the state very fragile. Criminality is a constant problem, newspapers seem to quite love the daily (or hourly) very sensational stories of people humiliating, injuring, robbing, raping, and killing each other. Therefore it is fairly easy to become completely paranoiac (you just have to listen to the very gruesome stories of any living soul in the place), but little by little, I managed to find my way, made some friends and discovered a more and more interesting South African life.
Some inhabitants do not understand the reasons why development agencies are working in their country (when they know what development agencies do, which is not often the case), while others do stress their importance. Once thing is sure, development agencies (BTC included) tend/want/plan to exit the country in a near future because South Africa is now in the process to become a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation Development (OEDC), which implies that the country will no longer be eligible for Official Development Assistance funds.
South Africa is such a huge country, so diverse (11 – eleven! – national languages, imagine, we sometimes have difficulties to cope with our three official languages in our tiny Belgium!) that whenever you think you understand something about the country, you’ll meet somebody that will challenge your mindset and send you back to scratch. Unfortunately, regardless of this rich diversity (or let’s rather say because of it) racial tensions (in Pretoria at least) are still an everyday problem, as well as the lack of skills of a huge part of the population (and the brain drain of the other part).
South Africa is a wonderful country; there are so many things to discover… And, I promise, whenever I had the chance to travel around and see the Kalahari Desert, the tea-banana-orange-mango-etc plantations of Limpopo or the mountains of the Drakensberg, I often felt completely breathless at the sight such infinite and wonderful places.
PS: Congratulations to those who managed to get through all this (is there anybody?)
PS 2: Hope you didn’t mind with me writing in English. Since this is the working language here, I admit I was struggling with the translation of the technical words into French…
Monica Quintens said,
April 16, 2008 - 5:20 pm
I got through all this!
With a question however:
Can you feel in your work and in collaboration with other development organisations that an “exit” is being prepared? And how does it translate in your work and collaborations? How do South Africans feel about this?
Monica Quintens said,
April 16, 2008 - 5:20 pm
I got through all this!
With a question however:
Can you feel in your work and in collaboration with other development organisations that an “exit” is being prepared? And how does it translate in your work and collaborations? How do South Africans feel about this?
Marie said,
April 18, 2008 - 12:26 pm
Salut Monica!
Je suis vraiment impressionnée, tu es très certainement une des premières à avoir franchi la ligne d’arrivée de mon post! On trinquera autour d’une petite savanna lors de ta venue, pour l’effort!!
Je vais tenter de répondre à ta question, mais en français cette fois-ci !
Disons que dans mon travail de tous les jours et mes contacts avec le Département de la Santé, je ne ressens pas une éventuelle stratégie de sortie de la Belgique et le fait qu’il n’y aura pas de nouveau accord bilatéral signé après 2010 entre les deux pays n’est que rarement mentionné. Puis, qui sait ? Un nouveau Programme Indicatif de Coopération sera peut-être signé après 2010, car cela prendra certainement quelques années pour l’Afrique du Sud avant de devenir membre de l’OCDE. Mais on en doute, donc après le mondial de foot, la CTB risque fort de réduire ses activités.
Le programme sur lequel je travaille touche à sa fin, donc on parle énormément de durabilité, mais cela n’est pas lié au fait d’une quelconque stratégie de sortie de la Belgique !!
Nous avons eu dans le courant de mars une table ronde organisée par l’Ambassade de Belgique, rassemblant les divers partenaires travaillant dans le domaine de la santé. Lors de cette réunion, l’Attaché a fortement insisté sur le fait que beaucoup d’Agences de Développement se retireront du pays une fois que l’Afrique du Sud sera membre de l’OCDE. Je n’ai été que très peu en contact avec les autres agences de développement. Seule la DFID est clairement en train de quitter le pays. Par contre, L’Agence espagnole de coopération vient d’ouvrir un bureau à Pretoria (mais avec une équipe super restreinte de une personne !). Que les agences de développement quittent le pays n’est pas un problème en soi, sauf que jusqu’à présent, la Trésorerie Nationale ne projette pas les fonds de l’Aide Publique au Développement (ADP) dans son planning. Les universités et surtout les ONG sont particulièrement inquiètes sur ce point, vu qu’elles dépendent particulièrement de ces fonds. Les avis des quelques sud-africains avec qui j’ai parlé à ce sujet sont mitigés. Certains pensent que l’Afrique du Sud doit être un pays modèle en Afrique, et pourra sans aucun problème subvenir aux besoins de la population. D’autres au contraire trouvent le pays encore beaucoup trop fragile et craignent des conséquences financières désastreuses. Ils ne pensent pas que le gouvernement pourra faire face à l’énorme pauvreté du pays sans aide extérieure. Les derniers se demandent toujours ce que peu bien être une agence de coopération au développement (une agence de construction peut-être ?).
Marie said,
April 18, 2008 - 12:26 pm
Salut Monica!
Je suis vraiment impressionnée, tu es très certainement une des premières à avoir franchi la ligne d’arrivée de mon post! On trinquera autour d’une petite savanna lors de ta venue, pour l’effort!!
Je vais tenter de répondre à ta question, mais en français cette fois-ci !
Disons que dans mon travail de tous les jours et mes contacts avec le Département de la Santé, je ne ressens pas une éventuelle stratégie de sortie de la Belgique et le fait qu’il n’y aura pas de nouveau accord bilatéral signé après 2010 entre les deux pays n’est que rarement mentionné. Puis, qui sait ? Un nouveau Programme Indicatif de Coopération sera peut-être signé après 2010, car cela prendra certainement quelques années pour l’Afrique du Sud avant de devenir membre de l’OCDE. Mais on en doute, donc après le mondial de foot, la CTB risque fort de réduire ses activités.
Le programme sur lequel je travaille touche à sa fin, donc on parle énormément de durabilité, mais cela n’est pas lié au fait d’une quelconque stratégie de sortie de la Belgique !!
Nous avons eu dans le courant de mars une table ronde organisée par l’Ambassade de Belgique, rassemblant les divers partenaires travaillant dans le domaine de la santé. Lors de cette réunion, l’Attaché a fortement insisté sur le fait que beaucoup d’Agences de Développement se retireront du pays une fois que l’Afrique du Sud sera membre de l’OCDE. Je n’ai été que très peu en contact avec les autres agences de développement. Seule la DFID est clairement en train de quitter le pays. Par contre, L’Agence espagnole de coopération vient d’ouvrir un bureau à Pretoria (mais avec une équipe super restreinte de une personne !). Que les agences de développement quittent le pays n’est pas un problème en soi, sauf que jusqu’à présent, la Trésorerie Nationale ne projette pas les fonds de l’Aide Publique au Développement (ADP) dans son planning. Les universités et surtout les ONG sont particulièrement inquiètes sur ce point, vu qu’elles dépendent particulièrement de ces fonds. Les avis des quelques sud-africains avec qui j’ai parlé à ce sujet sont mitigés. Certains pensent que l’Afrique du Sud doit être un pays modèle en Afrique, et pourra sans aucun problème subvenir aux besoins de la population. D’autres au contraire trouvent le pays encore beaucoup trop fragile et craignent des conséquences financières désastreuses. Ils ne pensent pas que le gouvernement pourra faire face à l’énorme pauvreté du pays sans aide extérieure. Les derniers se demandent toujours ce que peu bien être une agence de coopération au développement (une agence de construction peut-être ?).
Florence said,
April 29, 2008 - 3:57 pm
Hi!
Moi aussi, j’ai lu jusqu’au bout…
Beau résumé de tes 10 mois ici, dommage que tu partes déjà …
Florence said,
April 29, 2008 - 3:57 pm
Hi!
Moi aussi, j’ai lu jusqu’au bout…
Beau résumé de tes 10 mois ici, dommage que tu partes déjà …
Graft Mugaragumbo said,
November 12, 2009 - 1:33 pm
Fantastic experience Marie, indeed that is what it is in South Africa. Sometimes you wonder why BTC is wasting its meagre resources in South Africa other than focusing them to the most needs and poor nations, well, maybe all this is embroided in politics. For sure, most of the rural communities do not know about aid being brought by other countries into South Africa. They think that foreigners are just a nuisance and should be eliminated. God bless Marie for throwing this article onto the discussion blog.
Graft Mugaragumbo said,
November 12, 2009 - 1:33 pm
Fantastic experience Marie, indeed that is what it is in South Africa. Sometimes you wonder why BTC is wasting its meagre resources in South Africa other than focusing them to the most needs and poor nations, well, maybe all this is embroided in politics. For sure, most of the rural communities do not know about aid being brought by other countries into South Africa. They think that foreigners are just a nuisance and should be eliminated. God bless Marie for throwing this article onto the discussion blog.