Richard Neci Cizungu

Richard Neci is a Pharmacist and the Executive Director of the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN), the largest church health systems’ network in Sub-Saharan Africa active in 27 Countries. He holds a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Kinshasa, an advanced diploma in humanitarian Logistics from ISS-DRC and a Postgraduate Certificate of Management from Cumbria University. Previously, he has worked for 10 years as the managing director of a church Drug Supply organization serving more than 500 health facilities in East of DRC, a position in which he was recognized as the best manager of the decade 2010-2020 at CEPAC DRC for having leveraged the church supply chain system and driven the Organization to the top rank of Central Pharmaceutical Stores in DRC. Richard Neci is passionate in promoting access to quality medicinal products and fighting substandard and falsified medicines. In his current position, Richard has worked to guide EPN’s refocus on supply chain and quality control to build the resilience of church pharmaceutical systems in emergencies. He is devoted to advocating for the church health system and building the capacity of church health care workers. Richard has developed servant leadership and management skills demonstrated through his work results. His vast experience has had impact, especially in addressing governance and leadership, quality of medicines, supply and inventory management challenges faced by church health facilities, at the last mile level where the majority of them operate. Richard was born in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and is bilingual (French and English).