Angola’s president to step down after 37 years

LUANDA: Veteran Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced Friday he will not run in August elections, signalling the end to 37 years in power and naming his defense minister as the candidate to succeed him. 

The autocratic 74-year-old has been the oil-rich country’s president since September 1979, making him Africa’s second-longest serving leader — one month short of Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

His rule has seen the end of civil war and an investment boom, but has also



been criticized as secretive and corrupt, with Angola’s citizens suffering dire poverty as his family became hugely wealthy.

Dos Santos told a meeting of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that “the party approved the name of the candidate heading the list in the August elections as (Defense Minister) Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco.”

Lourenco, a former general, emerged as the probable next president late last year at another meeting of the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola).