Robert Rapando
Robert Rapando is a Kenyan health-systems strategist and social entrepreneur whose work is advancing primary care from policy tables to village households. Trained in community health and public administration, he spent eight years at Amref Health Africa, rising to Senior Health Systems Advisor and guiding county governments through the rollout of Kenya’s Community Health Policy, digital referral tools, and the Essential Medicines List. His policy briefs on devolved financing and community health-worker (CHW) remuneration now underpin county health bills in Kisumu, Kitui, and Turkana.
Since 2022 Rapando has served as Health Systems Advisor at Living Goods, where he co-chairs the Council of Governors’ Community Health Financing Technical Working Group. He helped craft a pooled-fund mechanism that unlocks National Health Insurance Fund reimbursements for 12,000 digitally enabled CHWs and led the county adoption of SmartHealth, a mobile platform that tracks household visits and commodity stocks in real time.
Beyond health, Rapando is a published researcher on talent management and employee performance in Kenyan commercial banks, reflecting his cross-sector interest in organisational effectiveness. He mentors young public-health professionals through Amref’s LEAP fellowship and co-founded Afya Impact Hub, a Nairobi incubator supporting start-ups in digital diagnostics and last-mile supply chains. Rapando’s vision is clear: robust, data-driven health systems that place community caregivers at the heart of universal health coverage.