Maxwell Mkwezalamba

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Maxwell Mkwezalamba is a Malawian politician and economist born on December 22, 1959. He is Commissioner for Economic Affairs for the African Union Commission, a position he has held since May 2004.

Mkwezalamba graduated in Economics from Chancellor College, University of Malawi with an honours degree in Economics, where he subsequently lectured and headed the Economics Department. He obtained a Master's degree in Economics in 1984 from the University of Manchester, UK, a Masters degree in Policy Economics in 1992 and a PhD in Economics in 1995 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA.

In addition to lecturing at the University of Malawi, he has worked in various capacities for the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the World Bank and the Malawi Government. He has also worked as a consultant on development, financial and economic management issues for the Malawi Government, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Bank, and the Germany Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

Mkwezalamba was a founding member of the Economics Association of Malawi (ECAMA) and served as its first President between 1998 and 2000. He was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Economic Management Team in Malawi between 2000 and 2003 and also served as Secretary to Cabinet Committees on the Economy and Budgetary and Financial Matters during the same period.

He has led the preparations of major technical and policy-oriented analytical work in Malawi, at the World Bank and at the African Union Commission, including "The Malawi Public Expenditure Review 2003", "The Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper", "The Review of the Implementation of the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy" and "The Review of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals: an African Common Position". He was also a member of teams that prepared Malawi's National Long-Term Perspective Study (NLTPS)- "Malawi Vision 2020", and the World Bank's "Malawi Country Economic Memorandum".

Some of Mkwezalamba's work has been published in "Public Finance Quarterly" and "Journal of Social Science".