Biography
Teopolina Namandje is a Namibian Development Finance practitioner with over 10 years of experience in the Government sector in Namibia and Sierra Leone. She served as an ODI Global Fellow and Development Finance practitioner at the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone, from 2024 to January 2026, where she supported key health financing reforms to advance Universal Health Coverage. She played a critical role in Sierra Leone’s Free Healthcare Policy stakeholder engagements and contributed to the development of a hybrid water ambulance intervention, targeting over five thousand women to reduce maternal deaths in hard-to-reach areas. In addition, Teopolina supported the design, and operationalization of the Sierra Leone Social Health Insurance (SLeSHI) towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Previously, Teopolina was a Senior Transport Economist at Namibia’s Roads Authority, supporting roads infrastructure financing strategies and stakeholder engagement. Earlier in her career, she led the Ministry of Trade and Industry Gobabis Regional Office in Namibia, working on trade economics and Small Medium Development. She holds an MPhil in Development Finance from Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa. Teopolina is a 2019 Mandela Washington Fellow in Public Management at Texas Tech University, USA. In 2021, she was selected as an Africa Infrastructure Fellow in Paris, France with a focus on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) Infrastructure financing.
As a Policy Leader Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute, she will present policy recommendations on EU-Africa health partnerships, with a focus on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights under the EU Global Gateway strategy in Africa. Her research will further offer insights on health governance into creating co-owned and development-oriented partnerships frameworks between EU and Africa.
During the fellowship, she intends to collaborate with Ministry of Health both in Namibia and Sierra Leone, African Union and the European Union Global Gateway team. Early 2025, she summited Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, a beautiful lifetime experience that taught her about resilience.