Professor Padmashree Gehl Sampath is the i.Chief Executive Officer of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, a new pan African institution dealing with technology issues, in Kigali, Rwanda. She is also the Senior Advisor on Pharmaceuticals and Health to the President, of the African Development Bank. Until recently, she was with the Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University, where she served as Director of the Global Access in Action Program since November 2021, and previously Senior Advisor from February 2017.
Professor Gehl Sampath is a well-respected thought leader in the field of development studies and global health, working on current challenges predominantly from a trade, technology and industrialization perspective. She is one of the original thinkers on new paradigms for international technology transactions that can better secure global public goods; with a focus on pharmaceuticals and health given the sector’s high global relevance. Her work in this area spans over two decades, focusing on understanding questions of access to technology and know-how, and how its absence impacts local production and by extension, the availability of drugs, vaccines and therapeutics at the firm, ecosystem, country, and the regional level, and stymies health care responses. She has served as the Senior Scientific Advisor to the Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), leading the work on a market shaping and pooled procurement system for Africa at the AU level. Since 2021, she has also advised the German International Agency (GIZ) and the German Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ) on accelerating vaccine production in Africa; worked with the African Development Bank Group on the Bank’s Pharma Sector Strategy for Africa, and served as the Chairperson of the Technical Advisory Group of the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (CTAP) of the World Health Organisation contributing with her expertise on technology transfer and technology licensing. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Rwanda, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, where she leads a large regional programme focused on building regional centres’ of excellence for vaccine production in Africa. She is also a member of the Trade and Industrial Development Advisory Council of the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Previously, she worked for several years at the United Nations leading the work on various topics in technology, innovation, industrialization, and development between 2009 and 2016, and has also served as Head of the Policy at the International Renewable Energy Agency. She was also an Adjunct Professor on Innovation at the University of Denmark from 2016-2021. Padmashree is also a Professorial Fellow at the United Nations University, MERIT, Maastricht, where she served as a Research Fellow between 2001 and 2007.
Born and educated in India, Germany and the USA, she has been a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford (UK), and University of Berkeley (California) during her education. Her academic background is in engineering, economics, and the law. Padmashree serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Competition and Change, is the author of six books, and her research has appeared in prestigious journals including the Michigan Journal of International Law, Harvard International Review, and Harvard Public Health Review. She currently has two more books in the pipeline, one that directly looks at global governance for health in a post-pandemic world.