At the heart of effective patient treatment is the concept of interprofessional education for healthcare workers. Connecting healthcare providers across multiple disciplines, in practice and in academia and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa is at the heart of the Africa Interprofessional Education Network (AfrIPEN) with collaborative, holistic, quality patient care as its primary objective in facilitating communication and teamwork across health care disciplines.

In 2020 the incredible work that this young organization had been building on with their first two conferences in 2017 and 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya and Windhoek, Namibia was sadly disrupted by the global COVID 19 pandemic, forcing them to reimagine their engagement. Specific to the challenges they faced was the inequal access to technology, connectivity issues and variable technological skills which made having an online conference challenging, but also highlighted the importance of connecting across countries and institutions’ healthcare providers and academics to further collaborative interprofessional working relationships in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The 3^rd bi-annual Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice for Africa conference was held virtually on 15-17 September 2021 with a partnership building day on the 14^th of September, and is praised as a true show of African scholarship and teamwork because of the diligent and consistent work of five School of IT students. As part of their JCP 202 community service module in the EBIT faculty Dean Botha, Raymond Kockott, Louis-Willem van Niekerk, Jordan Ramoo and Fabio Wood undertook to assist with the conference organization, presentation and speaker development virtually, and over the following 6 months attended bi-weekly meetings with the conference planning committee (Champion Nyoni, Judy Khanyola, Farhin Delawala, Helga Lister, Elize Pietersen, Gibson Masache, Paula Jardim and Firdouza Waggie) from across Sub-Saharan Africa. Foundational to this project was the identification of platforms and formats that are the most accessible to the AfrIPEN audience, considering the unique challenges of Sub-Saharan Africa, and making sure that all speakers and participants are familiar and comfortable with the technology.

The students report skills that will support them moving forward in their studies and careers: “learning and understanding inter-professional education was very insightful and we will use this knowledge to further our individual growth in the field in which we belong. Learning about how essential communication is between numerous people, as well as keeping up to date with projects was learnt through the conference.”

The JCP 202 community service module in the EBIT faculty focuses on developing skills in collaboration and group work, requiring each student to commit 40 hours to community service projects over the year. This outcome was certainly achieved with this interdisciplinary collaboration, the group reports that “…we have realized the importance of networking and forming bonds between group members and successful planning. Ultimately, running a conference has given us a better understanding of project management and objectives. All in all, what we learnt was so informative and necessary to our futures.”

“The AfrIPEN conference this year was a major success. Us as JCP students learnt so much regarding interprofessional education across all disciples. It was a privilege to work with such an amazing team” is feedback from the students that echoes the feedback from the community partner in this project. Elize Pietersen, accountable for the online management of the AfrIPEN conference has nothing but praise after delegates rated the conference at 4.5 (out of a possible 5): “It was an eye opener for me to work with the JCP team. I realized that there is much more to what can be offered, as a back-end conference managing team, than what I am used to. The technical skills our JCP team brought was phenomenal and seamless. For example, with the assistance of the JCP team we could enhance the quality of pre-recorded presentations, not only to show-case the presenter but to provide delegates with good quality and slick service. It was pure joy to work with the JCP team knowing that all technical issues are handled or will be handled no matter what it was.”

Information communication is foundational to furthering the collaborative healthcare practice that would benefit all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Facilitating mediation of information in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the purpose we are preparing students for at the Information Science Department in the School of IT in the EBIT faculty. This project was facilitated through collaboration with the Occupational Therapy Department, Ms Helga Lister; the AfrIPEN conference planning committee and Laetitia Cassells from the Information Science Department.