Mr. Jacob Mkandawire
Director in Debt Management Programme at the Macroeconomic and Financial Management
Mr. Jacob Mkandawire is the Director in Debt Management Programme at the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI), having joined the Institute on 24 May 2023. He oversees Debt Management Programme’s (DMP) capacity-building interventions, providing technical and administrative oversight and contributing to the strategic management of the institute. Mr Mkandawire has over 15 years of experience in sovereign debt management and financial markets. Prior to taking up this role, he held the position of Assistant Director in the Financial Markets Department at the Bank of Zambia. He was heading the Domestic Market Operations (DMO) division overseeing government securities market operations, money markets and liquidity forecasting, a key mission-critical role of the Bank’s fiscal agency and monetary policy implementation mandate. This was after serving in various roles in the Bank including as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Governor Operations and as Executive Assistant to the Governor.
He previously served as Director of the Investment and Debt Management (IDM) department at the Ministry of Finance and National Planning in Zambia, managing the sovereign debt portfolio consisting of external and domestic debt, overseeing the front, middle and back-office operations, leading external resources mobilisation as well as overseeing government investments in state-owned enterprises. He also worked at MEFMI as Programme Manager in DMP, from 2007 to 2012, providing debt management capacity-building advisory services to member countries.
Mr Mkandawire has served on various Boards of Directors including, Konkola Copper Mines Limited, Development Bank of Zambia, ZISC Life Plc, and Lusaka Water and Sanitation Company among others. He is a member of the Institute of Directors, Zambia, the Economics Association of Zambia, and the Financial Markets Association (ACI) of Zambia. He has over the years participated at various regional and international debt fora as a speaker and continues to contribute and collaborate on various topical debt management issues. Mr Mkandawire holds an economics degree from the University of Zambia and a postgraduate master’s degree in economics and finance from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. He is also an ACI foreign exchange certified dealer.