Heba Wafa

Heba Wafa is the Assistant Resident Representative and Social Inclusion and Local Development Team Leader at UNDP Egypt Country office.

Dr. Wafa has over 23 years of experience in the field of development. 

She is currently the Social Inclusion and Local Development Team Leader as well as being the gender focal point at UNDP Egypt Country Office.

 Through her work she addresses social protection, local and urban development needs in Egypt especially of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups including strengthening the HIV, TB and COVID-19 national response in Egypt.

She started her career in 1997 where she worked with several development partners and the Government of Egypt to support environment agenda in Egypt.

She worked in a number of policy programmes that aimed at establishing the newly created Ministry of Environment at that time.

In 2002, she specialized in Health Risk Assessment for Environmental Pollutants and contributed to the remediation of nine heavily lead contaminated sites in Greater Cairo and the preparation of the National Guidelines for Remediation Activities as well as the National Guidelines for Health Care Waste Management. Furthermore, she prepared the risk assessment analysis of air pollutants for Greater Cairo.

In 2008, she joined UNDP to work as Programme Officer in the Environment Team and in 2011 she was appointed as the Joint Programme Coordinator at the Resident Coordinator Office.

In 2013, she was appointed as the Local Development and Gender Team Leader at UNDP where she managed to lead a team of experts to prepare the Local Economic Development Strategies for four Egyptian Governorates. She led UNDP Egypt to obtain the Gender Seal Award twice and led the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Agency to achieve the Gender Equality Seal Award for Public Institutions to be the second public entity worldwide.

Wafa has extensive experience in planning and designing programmes tackling different developmental challenges, policy analysis and advocacy as well as gender mainstreaming and women empowerment.

Academically, Dr. Wafa has a Bachelor of Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University and a Masters of Public Health from the College of Medicine, University of Wales.