Addis Herald
  • Home
  • History
  • Africa
  • Travel
  • Music
  • Culture
  • Art

Culture

  • calanderEthiopia: A truly unique African country
  • passionfruit-istanbul-croppedPassionfruit’s Globe-Trotting DJ Mixes Tell Stories Through Disco
  • Ethiopia-HighlandsThe most breathtaking geography in Ethiopia
  • Christmas in Lalibela‘Genna’: Christ’s birthday anniversary, an indispensable part of Ethiopian culture
  • the weekendThe Weeknd’s Next Album Will Be Inspired By BLM Movement, COVID-19 Pandemic

Business

  • cashgo appAbyssinia Bank Launches Mobile Remittance App
  • East Africa HoldingEast Africa Holding & China West International Holding’s joins to build $ 2.2 Billion Cement Factory in Ethiopia
  • siemensEthiopia Signs Deal To Build Phase 1 of $440 Million Assela Wind Farm Project
  • EthiopiaCan agriculture be Ethiopia’s growth engine?
  • Orange-Digital-VenturesGIZ and Orange launch an Orange Digital Center in Ethiopia, the 3rd in Africa and the Middle East region

Africa

  • Aleksandra-Sova-Cardano-1-1200x600Cardano: The “birds” are late – Hoskinson addresses project in Ethiopia
  • MaskEntrepreneursCAR5 ways women are driving Africa’s transformation and contributing to a global reset
  • jad20210225-culture-nefertiti-akhenaton-592x296-1614265493-e1614766131609Ancient Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti & King Akhenaten finally in a photo
  • 20140208_MAP001_0Africa’s manufacturing puzzle: Evidence from Tanzanian and Ethiopian firms
  • battle of adwa woriorThe Victory of Adwa: A Fresh Perspective
Alex_Rothkopf_MIT_CTL_Addis_Ababa_University
February 20, 2020

What pharmacy students in Ethiopia can do with supply chain education

MIT News

What might pharmacy students at Addis Ababa University learn from an MIT supply chain course? The answer is quite a lot.

Research Scientist Alex Rothkopf of the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab recently taught a blended course to the Addis Ababa University (AAU) School of Pharmacy in Ethiopia. “I’ve never taught pharmaceutical students,” he says. “They’re used to a different way of learning.”

Learning about analytics in global health supply chains

The entire course, adapted from the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management and with support from John Snow Inc., took 16 weeks and was composed of both online and in-person instruction. Students would complete a six-week block of online learning followed by two weeks of in-person lab sessions with Rothkopf at AAU. The online component included a forum where students could ask questions and discuss the lectures. The first participants in the course were 55 pharmaceutical supply chain students and AAU faculty, who went through it as students in a “train-the-trainer” program, in order to learn the material and concepts to use in their own teaching.

With an average of four or five years in the pharmaceutical field, the group “had a lot of business experience,” says Rothkopf. Despite most learners having no formal training in supply chain management, they “knew the problems they see in the field. They had to do inventory decisions. They had to do capacity-management decisions. They had to do network design decisions.” And so they immediately saw how mastering supply chain analytics could help them; the potential to solve real-world problems they’d faced many times before inspired learners to master the curriculum.

Beza Negash is an assistant lecturer in the School of Pharmacy at Addis Ababa University and is also a master’s student in supply chain management at AAU. She was in the first cohort of AAU instructors to take the blended course.

Negash says the pharmaceutical supply chain in Ethiopia suffers from a lack of inventory management and poor network design, as well as a weak distribution system and weak fleet management. “We face major challenges,” she adds, such as overstocking, understocking, and product expiration, among others.

With online learning, although issues like reliable internet connectivity can be a problem in developing countries like Ethiopia, the learners reported that the platform was easy to use and beneficial. But those same constraints are also why they found the blended approach with an in-person component crucial. “The classroom is really important,” Rothkopf says, “to give them direct feedback so that they’re not spending too much time and getting frustrated.”

Conversely, Rothkopf adds, the online materials were crucial to making the in-person component successful. “The advantage of online materials is their student focus,” he says. “Students can learn at their individual pace, revisit materials as often as they want, stop video presentations to try it out themselves, or take breaks when they want. This is something you cannot accomplish a classroom environment, where you have to follow the pace of ‘typical’ students and adhere to a short time slot.”

From the classroom to the field

For Negash, learning inventory management and forecasting was a huge step forward. In the past year, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health worked to implement a new pharmaceutical information and inventory management system to address those same supply chain concerns. “After [we] took the course, we knew how to manage the data we have in hand and how to properly use the data to get optimized results so we can use our resources efficiently,” she says.

Rothkopf describes the new management system as a “massive infrastructure investment” that will require a tremendous amount of quantitative, data-driven decision-making knowledge. One way, he says, to meet this need is to “bring in consultants from overseas to try to help out. The other way is [to] enable the people on the ground to do that.”

Fifty learners participated in the pilot program. The hope is twofold: that those learners can go and pass on what they’ve learned to their students, and that the program can be replicated at AAU and elsewhere. If pharmacy students in Ethiopia can apply supply chain learning to their work, then courses like this one  —  in such a versatile format  —  can have far-reaching effects across a range of fields all around the world.

Source MIT News

Ethiopian Reforms Attract Investor Interest Why has the AU been silent on the Ethiopian dam dispute?

Related Posts

biden-1

Headlines

With a friend like America, does Ethiopia need enemies?

MaskEntrepreneursCAR

Africa, Headlines

5 ways women are driving Africa’s transformation and contributing to a global reset

cashgo app

Business, Headlines

Abyssinia Bank Launches Mobile Remittance App

Industrial Parks Development | Ethiopia |

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-vSnVQfBoo

Africa

  • Aleksandra-Sova-Cardano-1-1200x600Cardano: The “birds” are late – Hoskinson addresses project in Ethiopia
  • MaskEntrepreneursCAR5 ways women are driving Africa’s transformation and contributing to a global reset
  • jad20210225-culture-nefertiti-akhenaton-592x296-1614265493-e1614766131609Ancient Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti & King Akhenaten finally in a photo
  • 20140208_MAP001_0Africa’s manufacturing puzzle: Evidence from Tanzanian and Ethiopian firms
  • battle of adwa woriorThe Victory of Adwa: A Fresh Perspective

Travel

  • Homage to Entoto Park How the Old “Town in the Forest” is turning into a newly flowering tourist hubHomage to Entoto Park How the Old “Town in the Forest” is turning into a newly flowering tourist hub
  • 00ddd3-724x483This Is What It’s Like Trekking the Hottest Place on Earth
  • Screenshot_20200106-034619_GalleryExtreme Ethiopia in pictures
  • Addis-skyline-768x402Enigmatic Ethiopia: Africa’s (still) hidden jewel in the crown?
  • 929-1024x524-488x250Ethiopia’s Tourism sector is on the rise

Culture

  • calanderEthiopia: A truly unique African country
  • passionfruit-istanbul-croppedPassionfruit’s Globe-Trotting DJ Mixes Tell Stories Through Disco
  • Ethiopia-HighlandsThe most breathtaking geography in Ethiopia
  • Christmas in Lalibela‘Genna’: Christ’s birthday anniversary, an indispensable part of Ethiopian culture
  • the weekendThe Weeknd’s Next Album Will Be Inspired By BLM Movement, COVID-19 Pandemic

Business

  • cashgo appAbyssinia Bank Launches Mobile Remittance App
  • East Africa HoldingEast Africa Holding & China West International Holding’s joins to build $ 2.2 Billion Cement Factory in Ethiopia
  • siemensEthiopia Signs Deal To Build Phase 1 of $440 Million Assela Wind Farm Project
  • EthiopiaCan agriculture be Ethiopia’s growth engine?
  • Orange-Digital-VenturesGIZ and Orange launch an Orange Digital Center in Ethiopia, the 3rd in Africa and the Middle East region

RSS Allfrica.com News feed

  • Africa: Diplomatic Dithering Over Western Sahara Bodes Ill for Other African Disputes
  • Africa: The Invisible Generation Holding the Key to Africa’s Future Food Security
  • Africa: 'Time to End the Gender Pay Gap in Journalism,' Says IFJ
  • Africa: Two Cosafa Nations Set for Beach Soccer Africa Cup of Nations
  • Africa: Covid-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Refugee Women and Girls
  • Africa: Gambia U-20 Eyes Bronze Medal in Africa U-20 Youth Championship
  • Africa: Covid-19 Affects Over 1bn Children's Education Globally
  • Africa: Total Number of Covid-19 Cases Across Continent Nears 4 Million
  • Africa: 'Postpone AFCON Qualifiers'
  • Africa: The World Is Addicted to Coal - It's Time for the Planet to Go Into Rehab
  • Abijitta-Shalla National Park
  • Alatish Ethiopian National Park
  • Awash National Park
  • Babille Elephant Sanctuary
  • Bahir Dar Blue Nile Millennium Park
  • Bale National Park; Ethiopia’s lesser-known Treasure
  • Bale Mountains National Park
  • Borena-Sayint National Park
  • Chebera Churchura National Park
  • Dati Wolel National park
  • Gambella National Park
  • Gambella National Park 2
  • Kafta-Sheraro National Park
  • Mago National Park
  • Maze National Park
  • Nechisar National Park, Ethiopia
  • Omo National Park 
  • The Semien Mountains
  • Yabello National Park
  • Yangudi Rassa National Park
© Addis Herald 2021
  • Contact us
en English
af Afrikaansam Amharicar Arabiczh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanel Greekhi Hindiit Italianja Japaneseko Koreanla Latinru Russianes Spanishsu Sudanesesw Swahilisv Swedish