The Guild Learning Centre

ECSACON

The East, Central and Southern Africa College of Nursing (ECSACON) was established in 1990 as an executing arm of the then Commonwealth Regional Health Community Secretariat for East, Central and Southern Africa (CRHCS-ECSA) in the area of nursing and midwifery. The Arusha-based CRHC-ECSA secretariat which is now referred as ECSA Health Community (ECSA HC) brings together 16 regional states.

The member states are Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. ECSA Health Community mandate is to promote and encourage efficiency and relevance in the provision of health-related services in the region, while its mission is to promote the highest standards of health for individuals, families and communities in the ECSA region.

The broad objective is to promote and strengthen professional excellence through development of programs that will strengthen Nursing/Midwifery professional conduct education, practice, research, leadership and management to improve service delivery and uplift the quality of health of the communities in the ECSA region.

Vaka Health Foundation 

VAKA Health Foundation is a capacity building social enterprise for healthcare workers throughout Africa.  

VAKA means to 'build' or 'develop' or 'to be awake, watch or guard'. This action-based word reflects our values and ethos to building better healthcare in Africa. 

​​​VAKA's vision is to be the most trusted partner for capacity building of healthcare workers in Africa by enabling access to world class quality professional development and decision support tools that to strengthen service delivery in Africa 

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The Guild Purpose

The World Bank report on Education and Labor Markets for Nurses highlights that more than 80 percent of the population in low-income countries cannot access health services because of the lack of sufficiently trained health workers. Most countries face either absolute shortages (not enough health workers) or relative shortages (skills imbalances), sometimes both. The report goes on to highlight that a regional focus for investment may be necessary to create enough potential deals, reduce individual country and regulatory risks, encourage good private institutions to move across borders within the region, and seek to create regional standards for regulation. The ECSA region faces huge health gaps if it is to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. According to World Bank Open Data maternal mortality remains high at 264 per 100000 live births (2017) and under five mortality stands at 49 per 1000 live births (2020). The region also faces a growing burden on non-communicable diseases with 25% of all mortality in 2019 within the ECSA region being due to either cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes. As can be noted in the graph below the region has some of the lowest nurse/midwives proportions per 1000 population.

The Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the strain on the limited human resources along with other factors such as emigration to Europe where nurses earn better salaries.

One strategy to mitigate this challenge is to invest in training more nurses. Whilst country programs have invested heavily in pre-service training as well as post basic training along with some private providers like universities, ECSACON seeks to complement country programs by broadening access to specialized training and also introducing standardized newer courses to equip nurses with modern advancement in sciences. This will further promote regional cooperation and equity.

Contact Us 

To contact us by email reach us at info@ecsacon.org and admin@vakahealthfoundation.org