Jane Ansah

Jane Ansah is the Vice President of Malawi, in office since 4 October 2025, serving under President Peter Mutharika. She was his running mate for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the September 2025 election.

Born on 11 October 1955, she is a lawyer and retired judge with the rank of Senior Counsel (SC). She became a High Court judge in December 1998 and from 2006 to 2011 was Malawi’s first woman Attorney General, the government’s chief legal adviser. In 2011 she was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

In October 2016 she became chairperson of the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC). Her time there is best known for the 2019 elections. The Constitutional Court and then the Supreme Court annulled the presidential result over irregularities and found the commission negligent. The dispute brought months of protests calling for her to resign, and counter-marches by women who backed her.

She resigned from the commission in May 2020. In 2025 she returned to politics, first as a DPP parliamentary candidate and then, from July, as Mutharika’s running mate. Outside politics she and her husband are ministers of a church in Lilongwe.