Bingu wa Mutharika

He was born Brightson Webster Ryson Thom on 24 February 1934 in the village of Kamoto in Thyolo District, a member of the Lomwe ethnic group; his parents were teachers and members of the Church of Scotland Mission, which later became the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian. ¹ He was educated in India and the United States in the 1960s, graduating from the University of Delhi with a master's degree in economics. ¹ He served as an administrative officer in the governments of Malawi and Zambia, worked at the World Bank as a loans officer and at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa as director of trade and development finance, and was secretary general of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). ¹ In 2002 he was appointed minister of economic planning and development in Muluzi's government. ¹

Muluzi nominated Mutharika as his successor, and he won the presidential election of 20 May 2004 and took office a few days later. ^{1 2} In 2005, after a dispute with Muluzi, he left the United Democratic Front and founded the Democratic Progressive Party. ¹ His first term brought steady growth, falling inflation and a fertiliser-subsidy programme that significantly boosted maize production; in the 2005/2006 season Malawi achieved a food surplus, and the finance ministry estimated that the share of Malawians below the poverty line fell from 52 per cent to 40 per cent over four years. ¹ He was re-elected in 2009 with 66.7 per cent of the vote. ¹ On 31 January 2010 he became chairperson of the African Union, the first Malawian head of state to hold the post, and promoted an "African Food Basket" initiative on food security. ¹

His second term was marked by democratic backsliding, economic decline and shortages of fuel, foreign exchange and electricity. In July 2011 nationwide protests over shortages, prices and unemployment were met with live ammunition, and Malawi's health ministry confirmed 18 deaths in Karonga and Mzuzu. ¹ He expelled the British high commissioner after a leaked cable described him as increasingly "arrogant" and "autocratic", and expelled his own vice-president, Joyce Banda, from the party in 2010, though she remained vice-president of the country. ¹

Mutharika died of cardiac arrest in Lilongwe on 5 April 2012, the first Malawian head of state to die in office; his death was officially confirmed on 7 April, and Joyce Banda was sworn in as president the same day. ^{1 2 3}

The English article's text states that Mutharika was born and baptised in the Presbyterian denomination and later converted to Roman Catholicism, citing a BBC News profile; the Arabic article's infobox religion field reads Catholic, Wikidata's religion value is Catholicism, and the Arabic and Urdu articles file him under Malawian Roman Catholics. ^{1 2 3} Only one independent text attests the conversion — the infobox, the structured value and the category filings are echoes of the same claim, not independent attestations — so under the museum's two-source rule his faith is recorded as unknown, with the Catholic reading preserved for the founder's attention.

He succeeded Bakili Muluzi as president, and that relation is written in this record; his successor Joyce Banda has no record in the museum. ¹

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