Expert Team leader - Primary health care in Egypt (M/W)

Expertise France is the public agency for designing and implementing international technical cooperation projects.

The agency operates around four key priorities :

• democratic, economic, and financial governance ;
• peace, stability, and security ;
• climate, agriculture, and sustainable development ;
• health and human development ;

In these areas, Expertise France conducts capacity-building initiatives and manages project implementation, leveraging technical expertise and acting as a project coordinator. This involves combining public sector expertise with private sector skills to drive impactful results.

The position is based in Cairo, Egypt, and requires regular travels in Egypt, particularly to the governorates of Minya, Kafr El Sheikh and Aswan.

The Team Leader reports to the Project Manager based in Cairo and works in functional coordination with a Senior Health Expert and a Project Officer at the headquarters. The Senior Health Expert provides strategic and methodological support, contributes to technical quality assurance, and supports the review of key deliverables.

The Team Leader shall serve as a key technical interface with national and subnational counterparts, technical and institutional partners, and external experts mobilised under the project, ensuring effective collaboration across work streams and consistency between technical inputs, field implementation and project.

The responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• The Team Leader provides technical leadership and technical coordination of project activities under the overall authority of the Project Manager, who retains responsibility for overall project management, contractual oversight, stakeholder coordination, budgetary arbitration and line management of the project team.
• The Team Leader provides technical guidance to the three governorate coordinators, while their administrative and hierarchical supervision remains under the Project Manager.
• With support from both Project Manager and headquarters, the Team Leader is responsible for mobilizing and supervising national and international short-term experts, as well as ensuring quality control of all deliverables produced by experts.
• The Team Leader will provide technical oversight, particularly on the following areas:
• Governance: Institutional mapping and governance analysis, establishment of Local Health Steering Committees (LHSCs) including the development of terms of references, operational frameworks and tools.
• Quality and accreditation: Updating the Primary Health Care (PHC) operationalisation manual and developing practical operational tools ; development of digital quality tools and dashboards; supporting the PHCCs in implementing continuous quality improvement cycles and standard operating procedures (SOPs), establishment of Facility Improvement Teams (FITs), with a view to developing a model for national scale-up ; Participatory assessments ; Promotion of trust and patient satisfaction through culturally adapted communication and service design.
• Primary health worksforce and strategies: Health workforce analysis and planning, as well as training and capacity building; Health leadership and Professional Empowerment ; Diagnostic and curricula review of nursing and midwifery education institutions; Partnerships.

The Team Leader shall ensure that all technical interventions are designed and implemented with due consideration for community participation, gender-sensitive approaches, inclusive service delivery, disability inclusion, and the specific barriers faced by vulnerable groups, including women, children, migrants and refugees.

The project

Context

Egypt has undertaken a major transformation of its health system through the establishment of the Universal Health Insurance System (UHIS). After its deployment in six governorates of Phase 1 (Port Said, Luxor, Ismailia, South Sinai, Suez and Aswan), the health insurance system covers 5.1 million insured people (80% of the population of these governorates). The Arab Republic of Egypt will launch Phase 2 of the reform in 2026 in the following governorates: Minya, Kafr El Sheikh, Matrouh, North Sinai, and Damietta.

Primary Health Care Centers (PHCCs) play a central role in the deployment of the Universal Health Insurance System (UHIS), as they represent the first point of contact for citizens accessing higher levels of care. However, a large proportion of these facilities suffer from outdated infrastructure, obsolete medical equipment, weak governance and coordination mechanisms, inconsistent standards of care, insufficient digital capacity, shortages of qualified staff, and low public trust in PHCCs services particularly in underserved and high-vulnerability areas. Addressing these gaps is essential for PHCCs to function as effective first points of contact, build patient trust, and deliver consistent, high-quality services.

The plan aims to enhance service delivery, particularly for women and children. It aims to achieve several objectives: expanding family planning coverage, reducing contraceptive methods discontinuation and increasing the use of long-acting ones, improving attendance at antenatal care and child growth monitoring visits, empowering families—especially women—to make informed decisions regarding reproductive health and family life, and promoting exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months and continued breastfeeding up to two years.

The project is expected to be funded by the European Union, with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) managing the hard component (infrastructures) and Expertise France overseeing the soft component (technical assistance).

Purpose and specific objectives of the project

Overall objective

The overall objective of the programme is to improve the quality of primary healthcare services in vulnerable areas of Egypt, with a particular focus on the needs of women and children, as well as migrants and refugees.

AFD will be responsible for the infrastructure component of the programme, corresponding to Specific Objective 1. Expertise France will be in charge of Specific Objectives 2 and 3. The technical assistance will primarily target the governorate level, where most activities will be implemented. However, the interventions are designed to inform and strengthen national level strategies, such as the establishment of local health steering committees, the development of retention strategies, the analysis of task-shifting and the introduction of health simulation education.

Specific objectives

Specific Objective 1 (AFD): Improve the availability and quality of resilient and energy-efficient health infrastructure

In line with Egypt's National Health Strategy (NHS) 2024–2030 and the National Strategic Framework for Health Sector Adaptation to Climate Change 2024–2030, the programme will support the rehabilitation of selected primary health centers in targeted areas.

Specific Objective 2 (Expertise France): Strengthen the availability, accessibility, and quality of primary healthcare services for women, children, and vulnerable migrant populations

The programme will contribute to improving the provision of quality primary healthcare services in underserved areas by strengthening local health governance, improving the availability, accessibility and quality of primary healthcare services for vulnerable populations. In addition, the project aims to enhance access to quality, adapted primary healthcare services for migrants and refugees in Aswan Governorate, through close collaboration with international and non-governmental organizations.

Specific Objective 3 (Expertise France): Increase the availability, skills, and retention of primary healthcare personnel, as well as governance actors, to deliver quality and equitable services in underserved areas.

The programme focuses on strengthening the human resources. It supports better workforce planning, skills development, staff retention, and leadership capacity to drive effective change. A specific component focuses on modernizing nursing and midwifery education to ensure a continuous pipeline of competent professionals aligned with primary healthcare and UHIS requirements, through curricula revision aligned with the universal health insurance priorities, introduction of innovative pedagogical approaches and creation of simulation laboratories.

Technical qualifications and skills

• Medical doctor or Senior Public Health Professional with a Master's degree in public health, health policy, health systems strengthening, health economics or a related field;
• Analytical thinking, problem solving, decision-making and initiative;
• Extensive knowledge in human resources for health and/or quality and accreditation, in primary care;
• Advanced project management skills, including the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of public health projects involving multiple and complex stakeholders;
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and teamwork skills, with strong abilities in knowledge transfer, training and coaching;
• Excellent command of English (written and oral), French or Arabic is an asset.

Professional experience

• At least 10 years of professional experience;
• Proven experience working in a leadership role within health institutions and/or ministries of health;
• Previous experience as an international technical expert in the field of public health, preferably in similar contexts;
• Good knowledge of the geographic area;
• Good knowledge of the Egyptian public health ecosystems;
• Knowledge of Expertise France's tools and procedures, as well as the AFD Group's financial instruments, is an asset.

Starting date: June 2026.

Type of contract: 12 months fixed-term employment contract, renewable (5-year project).

Required documents: CV, cover letter, professional references.

Closing date for application: 31/05/2026.

Remuneration: According to EF salary grid and profile.

Position opens to national and international profiles.