Dr. Edwin Kojo Ogara is a pharmacist and global health specialist with over 18 years of experience across public health systems, pharmaceutical regulation, quality assurance, and health product supply chains. He serves as Essential Drugs and Medicines Officer and technical focal point for Health Products and Technologies at the World Health Organization (WHO) Kenya Country Office, supporting governments and partners to strengthen regulatory systems, pharmacovigilance, antimicrobial stewardship, and access to safe, quality-assured medicines and vaccines.
His work has contributed to Kenya’s progress toward WHO Global Benchmarking Tool (GBT) Maturity Level 3, including institutional development planning, regulatory audits, and quality assurance capacity building. He also engages in initiatives supporting local vaccine and biologics manufacturing readiness, including collaboration with the Kenya Biovax Institute and the WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme.
Previously, he served regionally with a pharmaceutical multinational as GMP Quality Assurance Manager for East Africa, supporting quality systems across Sub-Saharan Africa, and later worked as an independent consultant advising pharmaceutical start- ups on operations, policy development, and strategy. He is passionate about strengthening resilient health-product systems to support pandemic preparedness and health security across the continent and globe.