On August 12, 2024, the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine published, “A low-cost approach to upskilling tutors in frontline health care worker production value chain,” authored by Anddy Omoluabi, Linda Ugalahi, Olufolake Akeju, and Emmanuel Aiyenigba, members of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Nigeria Health Workforce Management (HWM) Activity implemented by Banyan Global.

Nigeria, like many countries, struggles with a shortage of health care professionals including frontline health care providers at the primary health care (PHC) level. While the country is pitched toward producing more health care professionals, the existing infrastructure to produce them is inadequate. Producing health care professionals with the required skills to deliver quality services is impeded by several factors including the use of outdated curricula for their training, low application of technology in teaching, and weak tutor capacity that is worsened by the paucity and high cost of opportunities for tutor continuing professional development.

To address these issues, in 2023 the HWM Activity designed and implemented a low-cost program called TutorConnect that offered low-cost continuing professional development to tutors. TutorConnect is a Zoom-based monthly training program that is facilitated by subject matter experts. The program offered topics spanning effective learning, enhanced instructional design, and improved student engagement in the 14 months of its operation with over 700 tutors from more than 10 states in Nigeria that benefited from it. Utilizing WhatsApp for additional support and peer-to-peer learning was crucial to providing more hands-on support and institution-specific solutions. This low-cost approach to building competencies enabled access to continuing professional development by tutors, limiting the effects of location and finances as barriers to continuing professional development. Developing the teaching capacity of tutors is pivotal to enhancing the quality of frontline health care worker training.