Country Director
Dr. Ritah Nakigudde Waddimba joined Pathfinder in May 2020 as the Senior Technical Director and Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID/Uganda Family Planning Activity. In June 2022, she was promoted to Chief of Party while at the same time being responsible for leading all country activities. In this role, she provided strategic direction for all project activities and developed and updated the project’s strategic plan to ensure consistency with USAID priorities.
Ritah previously worked for the UK Government’s Department for International Development as a Health Adviser, leading Reproductive Health programming and thus overseeing USAID and UK co-funded family planning programs in Uganda. She also worked with Mildmay Uganda as the Manager for Clinical services; and later joined Protecting Families Against HIV/AIDS (PREFA) as Executive Director, both positions enabling her to reach out to vulnerable populations with quality HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment as well as Reproductive health services.
She is a Public Health Management Specialist with a wealth of experience in delivering development programmes in Uganda and the Africa region, focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, Reproductive Health and Rights, nutrition and health in humanitarian crises; working across, NGOs and bilateral agencies, and collaborating with Government and multilateral agencies within the national health system.
Her experience spans across service delivery, programme planning and influencing the broader systems strengthening approaches in the health space, as well as linkage to the key determinants of health including education, water and sanitation, gender and social inclusion.