Professional Experience:
My role in the Joint Operations Centre (JOC) of the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) consisted, firstly, of ensuring that the JOC provided real time mission-wide situational awareness to both senior management and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York through Daily Situational Reports and Weekly Situational Reports, as well as Flash Reports and Special Reports. It was my role to ensure that the JOC achieves its objective of being the vital hub for the UNOCI Crisis Management Centre whenever the Mission enters into a crisis phase. I assisted in ensuring that the JOC accomplished its mission of being a relay between the Head of the UNOCI mission, the UN Country Team (UNCT) and the DPKO in New York. It was my role to ensure the preparation of Daily Situational Reports and Weekly Situational Reports were prepared in a timely manner. It was my responsibility to ensure the submission of the reports to the DPKO Situation Centre (SitCen) in New York.
As Permanent Secretary/Government Chief Economist, I was responsible for reviewing economic advice emanating from the public and private sectors as well as from bilateral and multilateral donors. In this regard, I served as the contact point for donor initiatives including those of the UNDP, the World Bank and European Union, among others.
In addition, I was also in charge of the country’s Poverty Alleviation Programme. My duties were as follows: Monitoring and evaluation of Malawi’s economic policies, projects and programmes, Over-seeing the production of publications such as the Economic Report and the Mid-year Economic Review; Drafting key government documents such as those for the Donors Consultative Group Meetings, the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and Social safety Nets.
Rising through the ranks of the Malawi Common Economic service from a Treasury Economist to Deputy Chief Economist, the Ministries of Finance and that of Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, My duties involved analysis and forecasts of Malawi’s National Accounts and Balance of Payments; Providing inputs for the preparation of medium-term macroeconomic policy; Reviewing the performance of statutory corporations; Assessing operational and investment budgets of statutory corporations.
being they were submitted for the review and approval of the Minister of finance; Review the applications of statutory corporations to ensure their consistency with fiscal budgetary performance; Progressively introduce Performance Contracts to commercial statutory bodies as a means of ensuring their commercial success; Taking part in the Malawi privatization programme for statutory corporations deemed to be purely commercial. I was responsible for drafting the Minister of Finance Annual Budget speech which provided a detailed description of the annual performance of the Malawi economy, budgetary allocations to ministries and State-owned bodies; and implied budgetary measures to achieve fiscal targets