For the second in our EAP podcast series, John Hawkins speaks with Joe Ching’ani, Chair of the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST) Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) in Malawi. In this role Joe guides the CoST Malawi programme, bringing his private sector experience to the group and working alongside government and civil society peers to enhance infrastructure transparency, participation and accountability across the country.

Joe shares his personal experience, including the challenges he faced in leaving a lucrative civil engineering position to start his own company. He also speaks about the backlash he encountered as an advocate of fair and clean contracting when the cashgate scandal took hold of Malawi and exposed significant corruption in the sector.

In 2020 Joe was made Chair of the Malawi Roads Authority and so he gives his view on government plans to enhance better investment in infrastructure, promote resilience and put users’ needs at the heart of delivery. He also shares his opinion on G7 plans to heavily invest in low-income country infrastructure and the values that should be at the heart of this investment.