…RBM deputy earns more than US Federal Reserve chair, Irish deputy governor
…in a country the World Bank says is among the world’s 10 poorest..
…K1.5bn payout matches entire 2026/27 Griffin Saenda allocation…
…AG Mbeta had ruled out benefits for Mathanga’s years away….
…payment lands as RBM sells 590kg of gold to raise desperately needed…..
….Malawi has paid Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) Deputy Governor Henry Mathanga K1.5 billion following his reinstatement after years out of the central bank…..
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-A grass-thatched classroom block at a primary school in Salima, Malawi, where pupils sit on the ground during lessons, set against the K1.5 billion Malawi central bank payout.
The payout comes despite Malawi being “among the world’s 10 poorest countries”, according to the World Bank, while Mathanga’s reported salary before leaving RBM was higher than the remuneration of some senior central bankers in developed economies that ironically help Malawi with aid.
At MK22 million a month in 2021, Mathanga was earning the equivalent of about US$337,000 a year, more than the current US Executive Schedule salary applicable to the Chair of the United States Federal Reserve and more than a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Ireland was earning in the same year.
The billion-kwacha payout also contradicts an earlier assurance by Attorney General Frank Mbeta that Mathanga would not receive benefits covering the years he was away from RBM.
RBM spokesperson Boston Maliketi Banda confirmed the Mathanga payment, saying it was made in compliance with a consent order issued by the Industrial Relations Court and signed by Mbeta and Lion Rock Attorneys, Mathanga’s legal representatives.
“The consent order reinstated Mr Mathanga as Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi and provided that he be treated as though he had never been dismissed, including entitlement to recover any salary, benefits and other employment-related entitlements lost during the period of his dismissal,” Banda said.
The confirmation raises questions over an apparent contradiction between the payment and Mbeta’s earlier position on Mathanga’s entitlement to benefits for the period he was away from the central bank.
Mathanga, who had been employed as Deputy Governor from 14 April 2020, was sent on forced leave in August that year. Just after a year on the role, he later resigned on 26 March 2021, arguing that he had been constructively dismissed after what court documents described as unfair and hostile treatment.
He subsequently sued RBM.
The parties later reached an amicable settlement through negotiations, culminating in a consent order dated 13 January 2026. The order reinstated Mathanga as Deputy Governor for Economics and Regulation effective 1 January 2026. It further provided that Mathanga should be treated as though he had never been dismissed and should recover benefits lost during his period of unemployment.
However, when questions emerged earlier this year over how much the settlement would cost, Mbeta said Mathanga would not receive benefits covering the period before his reinstatement.
“Reinstatement is from 1st January, 2026, so no benefits prior to that,” Mbeta said at the time.
RBM has now confirmed that K1.5 billion has been paid. Calculated over the roughly 57 months between Mathanga’s resignation in March 2021 and his reinstatement in January 2026, the payout averages about K26 million for every month he was out of RBM.
That is not necessarily Mathanga’s monthly salary. RBM has not disclosed the breakdown of the K1.5 billion between salary, benefits and other employment-related entitlements.
Deputy governor earning more than rich-country counterparts
The payout has also cast fresh light on the level of remuneration enjoyed by senior executives at Malawi’s central bank. When Mathanga left RBM in March 2021, his monthly salary stood at K22 million. At an average March 2021 exchange rate of about K783 to US$1, that was equivalent to approximately US$28,000 a month, or about US$337,000 a year. History
For comparison, the Chair of the US Federal Reserve is a Level I position under the US Executive Schedule. The last salary figure published on the Federal Reserve’s own information page, for 2019, was US$203,500, while the Level I rate had risen to US$246,400 by 2024. Against the latter figure, Mathanga’s annualised 2021 salary was about 37 percent higher.
Likewise, the Central Bank of Ireland’s 2021 remuneration disclosures show its deputy governors were paid €255,006 each that year. Using the average euro-dollar exchange rate for 2021, that was roughly US$302,000, meaning Mathanga’s annualised salary was higher than that of his Irish deputy-governor counterparts. Ireland’s central bank governor, Gabriel Makhlouf, received €293,257 in 2021, equivalent to roughly US$347,000 at the year’s average exchange rate, slightly more than Mathanga.
Not that Mathanga earned more than every central bank chief in the developed world. Rather, this shows that a deputy governor in Malawi was earning or earns at a level comparable to senior central bankers in vastly wealthier economies, and more than some of the directors of these central banks.
The contrast is particularly stark because Malawi receives substantial development assistance from richer economies to finance programmes the country cannot adequately fund from its own resources. Mathanga was also not Governor of RBM. He was Deputy Governor for Economics and Regulation.
And the institution he helps lead is the central bank of a country the World Bank says is among the 10 poorest countries in the world.
But K22 million salary was contested
The K22 million salary itself was at the centre of a legal dispute between Mathanga and RBM.
In early 2021, RBM sought to reduce salaries for its management executives by about 50 percent, which would have cut Mathanga’s monthly pay from K22 million to around K10 million.
Mathanga challenged the decision, arguing that the unilateral reduction breached employment law, and Industrial Relations Court granted an injunction stopping RBM from implementing the cut.
That dispute is important to the current K1.5 billion settlement. Mathanga and his supporters have argued that his eventual reinstatement and compensation should be understood in the context of the treatment he received at RBM and his claim that he was constructively dismissed, rather than simply as a gratuitous payout.
Indeed, the consent order requires RBM to treat Mathanga as though he had never been dismissed. The question now is how that provision translated into a K1.5 billion payment and why the Attorney General subsequently said there would be no benefits relating to the period before 1 January 2026.
World Bank: Malawi among world’s 10 poorest
The scale of Mathanga’s remuneration becomes more striking when set against Malawi’s economy. In its Malawi Public Finance Review, the World Bank says decades of weak economic performance have left Malawi “among the world’s 10 poorest countries”. History
World Bank data put Malawi’s GDP per capita in current US dollars at approximately US$508 in 2024.
That means Mathanga’s annualised US$337,000 salary in 2021 was equivalent to hundreds of times Malawi’s current annual economic output per person, although the figures relate to different years.
The World Bank says Malawi is facing a severe macro-fiscal crisis characterised by persistent fiscal deficits, unsustainable debt and weak economic growth. It says debt servicing is consuming more than half of domestic revenues, crowding out essential social and infrastructure expenditure.
The country’s foreign exchange position is equally precarious. Gross official reserves were projected at just US$118 million for 2025, with reserve coverage remaining at less than one month’s imports, while net international reserves were around negative US$2 billion.
RBM sells gold to raise desperately needed cash
The K1.5 billion payment also comes as the same central bank has been selling part of Malawi’s gold holdings to raise desperately needed foreign exchange. In April, RBM confirmed that it was disposing of 590 kilogrammes of gold.
There is no evidence that proceeds from the gold sale funded Mathanga’s K1.5 billion payment.
One payout, or a year of boreholes and classrooms for Malawi
Pupils learning under a grass-thatched open shelter as a teacher reads from a book at a primary school in Karonga, Malawi.
Pupils learning under a grass-thatched open shelter in Karonga, Malawi History
Scale of Mathanga’s K1.5 billion payout becomes clearer when compared with what the same amount could fund under Malawi’s 2026/27 development budget.
Across education, water, sports and other development sectors, K1.5 billion is enough to match, completely fund or substantially exceed government’s annual allocation to several major projects.
Government, for example, has allocated K1.5 billion to National Indoor Sports Complex in Lilongwe, widely known as Griffin Saenda complex. The amount paid to Mathanga therefore matches the project’s entire allocation for the financial year.
In education, K1.5 billion is K500 million more than K1 billion allocated to construction of Machinga Secondary School and about K330 million more than the K1.17 billion for construction of primary schools and rehabilitation of education facilities nationwide.
It is also three times the K500 million allocated to expansion and upgrading of Domasi College of Education, and equivalent to 75 percent of the K2 billion allocated to construction of three teacher training colleges for primary school teachers.
The contrast is even sharper in the water sector.
Government has allocated only K400 million to the improvement of water supply in Liwonde and Balaka towns. Mathanga’s payout is 3.75 times that amount.
It also exceeds the K1.15 billion allocation for Ground Water Extraction for Rural Piped Water Development Programme and the K1 billion allocated to improvement of water supply services in Dowa District.
Put another way, the K1.5 billion paid to one RBM deputy governor is enough to cover government’s entire K1 billion annual allocation for Dowa water project and still leave K500 million, exactly enough to cover the year’s allocation for expansion and upgrading of Domasi College of Education.
The comparison extends beyond education and water.
Rehabilitation of road networks at Cobbe, Kamuzu and Moyale barracks has been allocated K2 billion, while Water Reticulation Project for Barracks has K500 million. Mathanga’s payout alone is equivalent to 60 percent of the combined K2.5 billion allocation for the two projects as the Malawi Defence Force (MDF) faces an exponential housing crisis. History
RBM does not draw on these development votes, and there is no suggestion that money earmarked for schools, water or infrastructure was diverted to Mathanga. The comparison instead illustrates the extraordinary scale of K1.5 billion going to one individual when measured against what Malawi has budgeted for entire development projects serving millions of Malawians instead of just one person.
Another billion-kwacha bill
The Mathanga settlement joins a growing history of large bills arising from litigation, contested administrative decisions and settlements involving Malawi’s public institutions.
The most prominent turning point came after the nullification of the 2019 presidential election, when lawyers for Lazarus Chakwera and Saulos Chilima submitted claims totalling about K9 billion. High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal Registrar Agnes Patemba assessed the costs at K7,004,612,360 in a determination delivered on 10 August 2020, comprising about K5.4 billion for the Constitutional Court proceedings and a further K1.6 billion from the Supreme Court appeal. The order was made against the Malawi Electoral Commission. Politics
The figure drew immediate criticism. South Africa-based law professor Danwood Chirwa questioned whether four lawyers could justify close to K7 billion, and urged the electoral body to appeal the assessment.
Since then, billion-kwacha claims against public institutions have become a recurring feature of Malawi’s courts, with taxpayers exposed whenever government decisions are successfully challenged. Just recently, a dead bank has demanded half of the Malawi national budget in compensation. All of this in an economy the World Bank says remains among the world’s 10 poorest.
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