Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan has become the country’s first female president, following the death of President John Mugufuli.
Hasan,61, made history when she was sworn in as Tanzania’s first female president at State House, in the country’s largest city, Dar es Salaam.
Hassan is the second woman in East Africa to serve as the head of government. Burundi’s Sylvia Kiningi was president for nearly four months until February 1994.
Hassan will also be the country’s first president born in Zanzibar, the archipelago that forms part of the union of the Republic of Tanzania, Reuters reports.
The soft-spoken Hasan who was wearing a red hijab, took the oath of office using the Quran before Chief Justice Ibrahim Jumavowing.
Speaking at her inauguration, Hassan gave little indication that she intended to change course from her predecessor.
“It’s not a good day for me to talk to you because I have a wound in my heart,” said Hassan. “Today I have taken an oath different from the rest that I have taken in my career. Those were taken in happiness. Today I took the highest oath of office in mourning,” she said.
Hassan will complete Magufuli’s second term in office which had just started after he won elections in October.
Magufuli selected her as his running mate in 2015, with Hassan becoming Tanzania’s first female vice president. She was the second woman to become vice president in the region since Uganda’s Specioza Naigaga Wandira who was in office from 1994 to 2003.
Hassan was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania’s semi-autonomous island in 1960. After graduating from secondary school in 1977, Hassan studied statistics and started working for the government, in the Ministry of Planning and Development.
She worked for a World Food Program project in Tanzania in 1992 and then attended the University of Manchester in London to earn a postgraduate diploma in economics. In 2005, she got a Master’s degree in community economic development through a joint program between the Open University of Tanzania and Southern New Hampshire University in the U.S.
Hassan went into politics in 2000 when she became a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives. In 2010 she won the Makunduchi parliamentary seat with more than 80% percent of the vote. In 2014 she was appointed a Cabinet minister and became Vice-Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution for Tanzania where she won respect for deftly handling several challenges.
