Educating the supply chain logistics for humanitarian efforts in Africa: a case study

Purpose - There are gaps in the countries of Africa between basic universal health care and what is provided. Educating those who are trying to help is important to bring about change. Recently, there are many organizations and individuals responding to those needs, including governmental and non‐governmental organizations (NGO). These entities strive to improve the conditions of the African people by providing essentials such as food, clean water, and basic medical supplies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the NGO humanitarian efforts to determine strategies for these organizations to maximize their effectiveness. This paper will provide a framework, with examples that can be used to educate organizations involved in humanitarian efforts how to use their resources more efficiently and effectively. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology of this paper includes literature review and a site survey and interview are also conducted with the director of operations at an NGO called Global Health Ministries. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis is performed to assess how this non‐profit (and other non‐profit NGOs) manage their operations with limited resources, unlimited needs of customers, a global logistics and supply chain, and the necessity to minimize risk to the organization. Findings - The paper helps in determining how to leverage the benefits of an existing established network called Technical Exchange for Christian Healthcare (TECH) that can be utilized by NGOs to build a humanitarian supply chain for Africa and related decision framework. Various recommendations are derived from the analysis for improving services including implementing customer facing metrics, collaborating with other non‐profit organizations to leverage the strengths of each organization, recruiting volunteers with specific business skills like logistics, grant writing, etc. and improving partnerships with global logistics service providers. Originality/value - The major contribution of the paper is to present a design of a humanitarian supply chain for Africa and the associated decision flow framework for NGOs by leveraging and coordinating TECH network capabilities to help protect the safety of vital life of many vulnerable citizens in African continent.