Mwalwanda was also seconded for a brief period to the Malawi Government, where he held the post of Deputy Secretary with the rank of Deputy Comptroller of Statutory Bodies in the office of the President and Cabinet. Among other duties, he contributed to the preparation and implementation of the initial Reform Programme of Malawi’s Public Enterprises Sector (Statutory Bodies) . In this respect, he helped pioneer the idea of “corporate planning” and “expenditure monitoring” in Malawi’s Public Enterprises.
While in Malawi, he served as member of the Board of Directors of numerous public enterprises, including ADMARC, ESCOM, Air Malawi, Blantyre Water Board, Lilongwe Water Board, Capital Hotel, and Lilongwe Hotel. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Board of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sanford English Community School in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).
Mwalwanda joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in 1990, and has served as Chief of the Monetary and Financial Relations Section in the former Trade and Development Finance Division, and Team Leader of the Trade, Debt and Finance in the Economic and Social Policy Division. He often served as substantive Officer-in-Charge of the former Trade and Development Finance Division (TRID), and the Economic and Social Policy Division (ESPD). He has been involved in substantive organization of a number of key meetings and conferences at ECA.
He subsequently was appointed Principal Advisor and Head of the ECA Geneva Advisory Services. In this capacity, he supervised and coordinated the activities of the ECA Geneva Liaison Office in Switzerland, which serves as an important link between the ECA Headquarters in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and the Geneva-based international organizations, such as the World Trade Organizations (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The Activities of the ECA Geneva Advisory Services include providing technical support to the African WTO Geneva Group and African countries in trade negotiations in the WTO as well as support to UNCTAD-related activities.
Mwalwanda has made an important contribution in assisting ECA to deliver technical assistance to African countries in the areas of trade, finance and investment. In this capacity, he has been an integral part of ECA’s professional staff that has supported African countries on capacity building in trade and trade-related activities and trade negotiations. He has spearheaded and supervised a number of Brainstorming Meetings of African Trade Negotiators Preparatory to the Ministerial Sessions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and has participated in all six WTO Ministerial Conferences, from Singapore in 1996 to Hong Kong in 2005. He has also contributed to preparation for “Policy Briefs” to assist African countries to effectively participate in trade negotiations during these ministerial Conferences. Furthermore, he has also contributed to ECA’s research work in these areas and in providing advisory services to African countries, especially on multilateral trade negotiation issues in the framework of the WTO, the challenges of mobilizing development finance in Africa, investment issues and the debt problem.
For more information on the work Dr. Mwalwanda has done for the UN ECA visit: www.uneca.org/
