Namibia’s Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah took over as head of state on Friday, joining a still relatively small circle of women in Africa to have held the top job.
– Liberia: Pioneer Sirleaf –
Dubbed “Africa’s Iron Lady”, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf made history when she became the continent’s first elected woman president in 2005.
The economist, a former international civil servant and finance minister, won a second term in 2011 and the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.
She stood down in 2018 at the end of her second mandate.
She managed to maintain peace in the troubled west African country, but her economic record was less strong and extreme poverty persists.
Before Sirleaf, Liberia was led by a woman for less than a year after Ruth Sando Perry was appointed in 1996 as Chair of the Council of State of Liberia, a transitional body following a civil war.
– Tanzania: Hassan –
Samia Suluhu Hassan took office in 2021 after the sudden death of her authoritarian predecessor John Magufuli.
She was initially feted for easing restrictions on the opposition and media in the country of around 67 million people.
But rights groups and Western governments have criticised what they see as renewed repression, with the arrests of politicians, and abductions and murders of opposition figures.
Hassan is running for re-election in October.
– Malawi: Joyce Banda –
Joyce Banda became Malawi’s first woman president in 2012, stepping up from vice president to the position after the death of Bingu wa Mutharika.
She left the country in 2014 under a cloud, having lost the presidential election and facing questioning over a corruption scandal known as “Cashgate”.
She later returned to Malawi after four years in exile.
– Central African Republic: Samba-Panza –
The lawyer Catherine Samba-Panza was elected in 2014 as transition president when the country was in the grip of a civil war. She held the post until 2016.
She ran in the 2020 presidential election but lost to the incumbent.
– Ceremonial presidents –
In Mauritius, the world-renowned biologist Ameenah Gurib-Fakim in 2015 became the first woman elected to hold the largely ceremonial role in the archipelago. Implicated in a financial scandal, she resigned in 2018.
In Ethiopia, the diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde was elected president in 2018 by parliamentarians, also making her the first woman to hold the honorary role. Her term ended in October 2024.
– Between Bongos –
In the west African country of Gabon, Rose Francine Rogombe was swiftly sworn in as interim president in June 2009 to prevent a power vacuum after the death of Omar Bongo Ondimba.
His son, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was elected president in August that year — a result the opposition slammed as an “electoral coup” — and came to power in October.
By KBC Digital
