Company Description
Amref Health Africa was founded in 1957 and has since grown to become the largest African-based international health development organization; currently implementing more than 180 programs, reaching more than 40 million people across 35 African countries; and a staff complement of over 2,000. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, Amref Health Africa has offices in ten countries in Africa – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea (Conakry), Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. An additional eleven advocacy and fundraising offices are located in Europe and North America.
Amref Health Africa is driven by its vision of ‘Lasting health change in Africa’ and its mission ‘To catalyze and drive community-led and people-centered health systems while addressing social determinants of health’. We believe that the power to transform Africa's health lies within its communities, and therefore strive to ensure that health systems are not only functional but that communities are empowered to hold these systems accountable for the delivery of quality and affordable health care
Job Description
ABOUT THE ROLE
The Health Entrepreneurship Associate (HENT Associate) will offer entrepreneurship technical support for Amref’s Africa Health Collaborative (AHC) Program: Building a Resilient and Responsive Health Workforce in Africa programme in Kenya. This 4-year programme in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, will be implemented in Kenya, Senegal and Zambia during this first phase. The estimated ratio of health workers per population in Africa is 11.2 workers per 10,000 people, far below the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended ratio of 44.5. It is estimated that the global shortage of health workers will increase from 12 to 18 million by 2030, translating to a shortage of six million health workers. Africa also has the world’s fastest growing population, which presents governments and policy makers with both opportunities and challenges to ensure sufficient livelihood opportunities for its young population. To address these challenges and accelerate the current Universal Health Coverage (UHC) gains, Amref is implementing this innovative, multi-country, multi- million-dollar programme with the ultimate goal of contributing to increased and sustainable job creation within primary health care (PHC) sectors across Africa.
Reporting to the PHC Program Manager, the HENT Associate will lead the implementation of the Africa Health Collaborative programme’s health entrepreneurship pillars and ecosystem building. S/he will oversee stakeholder engagement to ensure ongoing relevance and alignment of program interventions with both national and sub-national job creation priorities. The role involves guiding and inspiring the assessment, training, and coordination of ecosystem players to bolster entrepreneurship and innovations by primary healthcare workforce, which includes Community Health Promoters.
ABOUT YOU
You are a leader who understands how to work within dynamic teams, fostering collaboration, and driving towards common ambitious goals. You are a clear and concise communicator who uses your skills to engage and maintain positive relationships with stakeholders, conveying strategies, and ensure alignment across various levels of the healthcare system.
You are able to think strategically to understand, analyze and influence the broader healthcare landscape, identifying opportunities for improvement, and developing long-term plans to address challenges.
You also are a strong project officer who is able to use the skills in planning, implementing, and evaluating program interventions effectively, while ensuring adherence to timelines and budgets. We know that the health sector is dynamic, and thus you are adaptable to respond to changes and challenges but still having an eye on the goal which is the key to success.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Project Management
- Provide technical expertise, oversee coordination, and supervise entrepreneurship activities within the AHC programme, ensuring alignment with project goals and objectives.
- Collaborate with the Project Leads in stakeholder management for health entrepreneurship.
- Conduct regular risk assessments, identifying potential obstacles and developing mitigation strategies to ensure project success and minimize disruptions to Africa Health Collaborative activities.
2. Health Entrepreneurship Support
- Lead strategic mapping and vetting of health sector entrepreneurship opportunities, leveraging the private and public financing such as the Social Health Insurance Fund.
- Provide comprehensive support to health workforce and affiliated entrepreneurs in business development, focusing on supply chain optimization.
- Establish and nurture inter-university social entrepreneurship networks in collaboration with tertiary institutions.
- Work with critical stakeholders in public and private sectors to conduct targeted mapping and vetting of entrepreneurship opportunities in the health and related sectors.
- Conduct entrepreneurship skills and opportunities mapping among youth and provide training geared towards addressing health ecosystem needs.
- Work closely with youth networks, innovation hubs, and tech partners to enable scalable community-driven solutions.
- Support the co-creation and implementation of health innovation challenges, bootcamps, and accelerators.
- Work with critical stakeholders to develop and deploy training programmes and networks that enhance the health workforce and affiliated entrepreneurs; skills in business development, social entrepreneurship, and supply chain considerations.
- Develop, test, and scale sustainable innovative business models, such as Village Savings and Loaning Associations, Social Franchising, Social Marketing and other entrepreneurship models, management platforms and community groups.
3. Monitoring, Evaluation Research and Learning
- Support monitoring and evaluation processes to assess program progress, ensure accountability, determine impact, and facilitate organizational learning.
- Support management of health data monitoring activities, ensuring accurate reporting in various AHC and external systems including CHW registry, dashboards and project-based tools.
- Take the lead in documenting, institutionalizing, and disseminating achievements, best practices, and lessons learned from entrepreneurship activity implementation.
- Support in conducting and applying research to inform the implementation of best practices in entrepreneurship interventions.
- Develop and implement workplans, tools, and methodologies to support health entrepreneurship within the PHC sector.
4. Health ecosystem
- Support stakeholder policy engagement initiatives, including with youth, to address identified gaps within the health entrepreneurship pillar.
- Develop and maintain strong, collaborative partnerships with health sector entities, government counterparts, regulators, and county stakeholders to ensure effective program implementation.
- Represent the organization at county-level technical meetings, conferences, and workshops, collaborating with other Amref Staff to support the co-design and institutionalization of project interventions.
- Guide the development and engagement of a health entrepreneurship ecosystem, fostering innovation.
5. Program development
- Actively participate or lead program concept development and proposals for fundraising.
- Engage in strategic partnerships towards program development.
Qualifications
EDUCATION
- University Degree in Economics, Health System Management, Business Administration, Economics, or related social sciences.
REQUIRED EXPERIENCE
- A minimum of 3 years relevant youth or health entrepreneurship experience.
- Demonstrated experience working with multidisciplinary teams is an advantage.
- Experience in implementing development programs is an advantage
- Experience in implementing in the private sector is an advantage.
- Experience in delivering technical assistance and/or institutional capacity building is an asset.
- Proficiency in report writing, and presentation skills.
- Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as required.
SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES
- Strategic thinking skills.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills.
- Good coordination, problem solving and networking skills.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement skills.
- Excellent report writing skills.
- Decision making and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work under pressure, and within strict time limits.
Additional Information
Your application should include a cover letter detailing why you are the best fit for this position and your CV with relevant skills and experience. Closing date will be October 9th 2025.
Amref Health Africa does not require applicants to pay any money at whatever stage of the recruitment and selection process and has not retained any agent in connection with recruitment. Although Amref may use different job boards from time to time to further spread its reach for applicants, all open vacancies are published on our website under the Vacancies page and on our official social media pages. Kindly also note that official emails from Amref Health Africa will arrive from an @amref.org address.
Amref Health Africa is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff to share this commitment. Amref Health Africa is is dedicated to diversity and is an equal-opportunity employer with a non-smoking environment policy.
