Emmanuel Kabengele Mpinga obtained a master's degree in administration and management of health institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1993. Between 1988 and 1997, he was responsible for planning and evaluating primary health care for the Ministry of Health and Secretary General of the Committee for Democracy and Human Rights (CDDH). When he arrived in Switzerland, he specialised in economic, social and cultural rights at the Collège universitaire Henry Dunant. In 2002, he obtained a master's degree in public health from the UNIGE, followed in 2007 by a PhD in health policies and systems from the Institut universitaire Kurt Bösch in Sion. In 2002, he joined the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (IMSP), which has since become the Institute of Global Health, part of the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Health and Community Medicine. Appointed assistant professor at the Swiss School of Public Health and at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine in 2008, then associate professor in 2013, he retires from the Faculty in September 2025. 

A specialist in the epistemology of health and human rights, Emmanuel Kabengele Mpinga is also an expert for the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (DPA), intergovernmental agencies and international NGOs in the fields of research and peacebuilding, public health and human rights. He is a member of numerous learned societies and a reviewer for several international journals.