Michael Kishiwa Francis

Michael Kishiwa Francis is a pharmacist with more than 13 years of experience in public health services and health commodity management in Tanzania. He has extensive experience in pharmaceutical policy and planning, health commodities management, and public health supply chains.

Francis is the strategic planning advisor and Abt team lead for USAID Global Health Supply Chain Technical Assistance – Tanzania. The project provides technical assistance to the Tanzanian government to develop agile, robust, and sustainable health supply chains that contribute to improved government delivery of health care services.

Francis provides ongoing assessment of the project’s governance and supply chain policy technical assistance activities, including those that support policy setting and reform, strategic planning, resource allocation, regulations, inter-sectoral and donor coordination, and monitoring and evaluation.

He provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children in designing and executing a holistic supply chain system review of the health sector and led the design and development of the country’s COVID-19 supply chain tracking portal.

As a pharmaceutical services manager at the Tanzanian National Health Insurance Fund, Francis led development of the Fund’s benefit package guidelines and medicine formulary. Prior to this, Francis was the drug logistical specialist on the USAID Neglected Tropical Diseases Control Program, where he provided technical assistance to the Tanzanian Medical Stores Department in proper documentation and importation of donated medicines, inventory management, and timely distribution of drugs to districts. He also provided technical assistance to district-level counterparts in drug management and storage.

Expertise:

• Health commodities management
• Supply chain strategic planning and management
• Health insurance benefit design and implementation

Key Projects:

• USAID Global Health Supply Chain Technical Assistance – Tanzania
• USAID Neglected Tropical Diseases Control Program

Memberships:

• Member and former President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Tanzania

Countries Served In:

• Tanzania