Tanzania is set to swear in first female president Samia Hassan Suhulu, the countrys Vice-President, following the sudden death of President John Magufuli.
Under the constitution Hassan, will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which expires by 2025. She will also become the first female President in East Africa.
According to Tanzanian Constitution, when the Office of the President becomes vacant by reason of death, resignation, loss of electoral qualifications or inability to perform his functions due to physical infirmity or failure to discharge the duties and functions of the Office of the President, then the Vice President shall be sworn in and become the President for the unexpired period of the term of five years.
Hon. Suluhu assumed office on November 5, 2015, as the 10th vice president of Tanzania. She will not only become Tanzania’s female president but also the first female president in Eastern Africa.
Suluhu will also nominate her possible successor as Vice-President which will then be confirmed by the National Assembly through a 50% vote by all Members of Parliament.
Hassan Suluhu was born in 1960 in Zanzibar. She graduated from high school but has said publicly that her finishing results were poor, and took a clerkship in a government office at 17.
In 1988, after further study, she rose in the ranks to become a development officer in the Zanzibari government.
She was employed as a project manager for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and in the 1990s was made executive director of an umbrella body governing non-governmental organisations in Zanzibar.
She was Member of Parliament for the Makunduchi constituency from 2010 to 15 and has been Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office for Union Affairs since 2010.
In 2014, she served as the vice-chairperson for the Constitutional Assembly which was tasked with drafting Tanzania’s new constitution.
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