Paulin Basinga

Dr. Paulin Basinga serves currently as the director, Health, Africa of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to this recent position, he served as the country director for Nigeria, based in Abuja, where he led a team in the development and execution of the country strategy from 2017 to August 2020. His work fulfilled the foundation’s programmatic priorities in Nigeria and involved complex coordination across the foundation’s divisions and programs. As such, he acted as the principal liaison with key program leads and program strategy teams in Seattle; and represented the foundation’s health, nutrition, agriculture, gender, and financial inclusion priorities in Nigeria.

Before joining the Gates Foundation in 2012, Paulin served as deputy director in charge of Research and Consultancies at the National University of Rwanda’s School of Public Health. There, he spent years designing, implementing, and evaluating public health interventions for HIV, TB, and maternal and child health. He also led research into ways to strengthen the country’s health systems.

Paulin joined the foundation as a senior program officer on the HIV team (under the Global Health division). He worked on the HIV Efficiency and Effectiveness Initiative, where he led the development and execution of strategies to make the foundation’s HIV investments more efficient and effective. In June 2013, he joined the newly formed Integrated Delivery team as a senior program officer, developing and managing a portfolio of investments in community and child health.

In 2015, Paulin went for a year-long secondment to the Ministry of Health in Rwanda. Working with Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC), he supported the effective programs integration, helped put in place an operational performance and program efficiency and effectiveness, and supported efforts to maximize data use for decision making. Upon his return to Seattle, he served as deputy director in the Integrated Delivery team’s Country Primary Healthcare Initiative. The initiative focused on integrating primary health care to provide treatment, prevention, and other essential services in Ethiopia and Nigeria, but also in Senegal, Tanzania, and other African countries.

Paulin completed his medical degree at the National University of Rwanda and holds a master’s degree and PhD in International Development from Tulane University in the United States.