President Dr Lazarus Chakwera has appointed another lecturer from the University of Malawi to head the technical team at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs in the department of Economic Affairs.

Dr. Muzalale is PhD holder majoring in health economics, health financing and macroeconomics.

He got his PhD in Health Economics at Heidelberg University in 2016 and MSc in Health Economics and Pharmaco- Economics at Cardiff University in 2010.

He has worked in the Ministry of Health for close to 8 years before joining the University of Malawi in the Department of Economics.

He has worked on impact evaluation projects such as of an incentive intervention on service use, on out of pocket expenditures, and more.

In addition to designing and implementing impact evaluation studies, he has also worked on such exercises as costing of service contracts, assessing out of pocket expenditures related to HIV/AIDS ART care, and impact of a subsidy program on nutrition outcomes.

He has also worked on consultancies such as a meter validation study for the Lilongwe Water Board.

Prior to his career as an academic, Jacob also worked in the Malawi Ministry of Health as a planning officer on such assignments as national budgeting processes, the review and monitoring of district implementation plans (DIPs), financing resources tracking studies through national health accounts studies and resource mapping exercises.

He has vast experience in development of data collection tools, data collection, cleaning and analysis, report writing and results.

He goes to the Ministry of Finance to boost the technical team that has names like Dr Betchani Tcheleni who is Secretary to Treasury.

Tcheleni and Muzalale are both on secondment as both have been plucked from the University.

It is clear that President Dr Lazarus Chakwera is ‘insulating’ the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Simplex Chithyola Banda who is only familiar with policy issues than economics.

It may also be a sign that in the impeding cabinet reshuffle, the president is to hire someone as Minister of Finance who knowledge in economics and Financial matters.

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