Dr. James Batuuka
Treasurer
Dr. James Batuka is a senior public health, programme and health-systems executive with more than 30 years of experience translating major health investments into effective programmes, stronger institutions and population-level delivery across Africa and other low- and middle-income countries.
His career spans programme strategy and implementation, stewardship of large-scale health investments, health economics, government and donor engagement, institutional strengthening, localisation, pharmaceutical and supply-chain systems, and performance management. He is a pharmacist by training and holds an MBA from Makerere University and an MPH in Health Economics from the University of Cape Town.
James spent more than 13 years with USAID, where he held senior technical and programme leadership responsibilities. His portfolio included serving as Contracting Officer’s Representative for the $650 million KEMSA Medical Commodities Program and the $550 million Kenya Pharma contract, as well as USAID project manager for a seven-year, $120 million bilateral cooperative agreement with Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.
A consistent focus of his career has been strengthening institutions, ensuring program implementation and moving externally financed programmes towards sustainable local ownership. In Kenya, he helped strengthen KEMSA and transition HIV commodity procurement towards national ownership, supported the transition of the AMPATH programme to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, and led work contributing to the national scale-up of routine viral-load monitoring to more than 90% coverage. In Zimbabwe he supported the implementation of Malaria, HIV and TB programmes working closely with the government of Ministry of Health and Child Care and development partners.
His experience extends across multiple countries and public-health priorities. He has managed multi-country procurement and pharmaceutical systems, led and supported multidisciplinary teams, and worked closely with ministries of health, development partners, implementing organisations and private-sector institutions. Earlier in his career in Uganda, he managed a USAID-supported social-marketing programme and led the introduction of insecticide-treated bed nets.
Across these roles, James has developed particular expertise at the intersection of financing, institutions and implementation: stewarding substantial resources, identifying and addressing delivery bottlenecks, strengthening organisations and teams, building partnerships, improving accountability for results, and supporting interventions to achieve scale and sustainable impact.
