Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the former president of Angola passed away at the age of seventy-nine (79)
Dos Santos, who presided over the country from 1979 to 2017, passed away on Friday morning in Barcelona, Spain. Before his passing, the former president was hospitalized in Spain.
One of the longest-serving presidencies in history was that of Dos Santos.
The Angolan government issued a statement in which it declared that it bowed with the utmost respect and regard to the figure of a statesman of immense historical dimension, “who governed for many years with wisdom and humanism the fate of the Angolan Nation, in very difficult moments.”
The presidency expressed deep emotions of grief for the family and urged everyone to be calm at this difficult moment.
Angola, a former Portuguese colony, recovered from a twenty-seven-year civil war to become one of the key economic players on the continent.
The majority of Angola’s post-war economic development and reconstruction initiatives were supervised by Dos Santos of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party.
