Malawi Vice President Saulos Chilima is dead.

President Lazarus Chakwera confirmed on Tuesday, June 11 that Chilima died alongside nine other people in a plane crash.

“Despite the experience of the crew, something terrible happened to that aircraft sending it crashing down and  killing everyone on board,” he said.

President Chakwera added: “I understand this feeling because I feel them too. It is important that we comfort each other now and the weeks to come as we mourn together. He was a good man, patriotic citizen. It was an honour to have him as my deputy in the past four years.”

The Malawi Defence Forces (MDF) aircraft carrying Chilima “went off radar” after leaving Lilongwe on Monday, June 10 at 9:17 am.

The aircraft was supposed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu International Airport at 10:02 am, but it failed to do so.

Who was Dr. Saulos Chilima?

Dr. Saulos Chilima was born on 12th February 1973. He was of the Ngoni tribe from Ntcheu District in Central Malawi.

He is married to Mary and together they have two children. Dr. Chilima is a Roman Catholic with leadership positions within the church.

Chilima was first sworn in as Vice President of the Republic of Malawi on 30th May 2014. On 28th June 2020, Dr Chilima was sworn in for his second term as Vice President of the republic of Malawi. He holds a PhD in Knowledge Management from the University of Bolton, a Master’s degree in Economics as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences, Computer Science and Economics from the University of Malawi.

Dr. Chilima is the first Malawian to head Airtel Malawi, the leading mobile telecommunications company in the southern African country. Before venturing in telecommunications, he held Senior Sales Marketing positions in the banking sector and the fast moving consumer goods sector namely the Leasing and Finance Company, Unilever Malawi, Coca cola and Carlsberg.

The Malawi government website https://www.malawi.gov.mw/ describes Chilima as “a performer, a workaholic and has been an achiever everywhere he has been.”

Here are some of the notable achievements of Chilima

He drove business growth from 357,000 customers in 2006 to 2,800,000 customers in December 2012 and improved employee satisfaction from 50 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2012 for Airtel Malawi
• Coordinated the successful rebranding of Celtel to Zain in 2008 as measured by total market awareness of 52% (as of April 2010) and mobilization of employee buy-in. Further successful transition from Zain to Airtel in November and living a positive impression on all stakeholders.
• Significantly contributed to the OPCO performance such that the company was awarded “OPCO of the Year 2008” as well as “Initiative of the Year” with the Quick Refill Centers (QRC) concept.
• Successfully steered the implementation of a unique and innovative outsource model in the telecoms space for Airtel Malawi in its Network, Call centre and IT departments while at the same time ensuring there was minimal or no disruption in the business operations