Cheickna Toure is a health financing, public health, and information systems expert with almost 25 years of experience working for private and non-profit organizations in Africa, Europe and America on social protection and knowledge sharing.
At Results for Development (R4D), Mr. Toure is a program director in the USAID-funded Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator, a five-year project that expedites countries’ progress toward self-sustaining, strong health systems. He leads COVID-19 immunization studies and cultivates opportunities for linkages and internal cross-programmatic learning. He also oversees the day-to-day work of other project staff. Prior to the Accelerator, he was seconded to Amref Health Africa to serve as senior health financing advisor. Mr. Toure was also deputy director and health financing technical lead of Results for Development’s African Collaborative for Health Financing Solutions Project (ACS). A groundbreaking program, ACS partnered with six African organizations to advance the universal health coverage (UHC) agenda in sub-Saharan Africa and was an exemplar of locally-led development. ACS produced a suite of nearly 70 resources and tools to help other organizations go beyond simply working with individual local partners but to build collective engagement and strengthen the local and continent-wide ecosystem. As a member of the ACS team, Mr. Toure worked to ensure the technical quality and use of appropriate health financing approaches in sub-Saharan countries and to support the coordination of collaborative learning opportunities. He built and managed strategic partnerships with local institutions and collaborative relationships with key experts.
For more than 15 years prior to joining R4D, Mr. Toure worked with public and private organizations including NGOs and political representatives to advocate and push for universal access to healthcare in Mali. As deputy director of a community-based health insurance scheme, he worked with the ministry of social affairs to design, implement and monitor a national health coverage extension plan. As a consultant with the World Health Organization, Mr. Toure conducted studies on health financing issues in Mali and assisted the ministries of health, solidarity and family and welfare to develop Mali’s national health financing strategy. He has also helped several result-based financing programs to design and implement strong and smart information systems.
Mr. Toure is a member of diverse communities of practices (health service delivery, financial access, results-based financing, collaborative learning), where he is trying to bring novel perspectives for advancing universal health coverage.
Mr. Toure holds a master’s degree in information systems engineering from the University of Paris XII and a Master of Public Health M.P.H. from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. He speaks English and French. Mr. Toure lives in Nairobi, Kenya with his wife and four children.
