Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Tanzania Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
She became the sixth president of Tanzania in March 2021, and the first woman to hold the office — opening the country up after the Magufuli years, and then, critics say, closing it again.
Samia Suluhu Hassan was born in Zanzibar and left school at seventeen, taking a clerk's job and studying part-time for years afterwards — a statistics diploma, then degrees in public administration and economics taken while raising four children. She worked her way up through the Zanzibari civil service and development projects before entering politics in her forties.
She was a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives and a minister there, then chaired the drafting committee of the constitutional review — a slow, technical job that gave her a reputation for patience and for getting people in a room to agree. In 2014 she was elected to chair the Constituent Assembly. She became vice-president of Tanzania in 2015.
When John Magufuli died in March 2021 she succeeded him under the constitution, becoming the first woman to be president of Tanzania and, at the time, one of only two serving women heads of state in Africa.
The change of direction was immediate and substantial. She acknowledged that Covid-19 existed in the country, convened a scientific committee and brought in vaccines after two years of official denial; she lifted the bans on four newspapers; she released the opposition leader Freeman Mbowe; she reversed the policy of permanently expelling pregnant schoolgirls, which had kept tens of thousands of girls out of education; and in 2023 she lifted the ban on opposition political rallies that had been in force since 2016. She called the programme the four Rs — reconciliation, resilience, reform and rebuilding — and was widely praised abroad for it.
She was a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives and a minister there, then chaired the drafting committee of the constitutional review — a slow, technical job that gave her a reputation for patience and for getting people in a room to agree. In 2014 she was elected to chair the Constituent Assembly. She became vice-president of Tanzania in 2015.
When John Magufuli died in March 2021 she succeeded him under the constitution, becoming the first woman to be president of Tanzania and, at the time, one of only two serving women heads of state in Africa.
The change of direction was immediate and substantial. She acknowledged that Covid-19 existed in the country, convened a scientific committee and brought in vaccines after two years of official denial; she lifted the bans on four newspapers; she released the opposition leader Freeman Mbowe; she reversed the policy of permanently expelling pregnant schoolgirls, which had kept tens of thousands of girls out of education; and in 2023 she lifted the ban on opposition political rallies that had been in force since 2016. She called the programme the four Rs — reconciliation, resilience, reform and rebuilding — and was widely praised abroad for it.
- France 24 — How Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan went from reform to repression
- Chatham House — Tanzania election: erosion of democracy will also come at the cost of economic potential
- Wikipedia — Samia Suluhu Hassan
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