One evening in March 2021, Samia Suluhu Hassan – then the first woman to hold the vice-presidency of Tanzania – appeared on television shortly before midnight to announce the death of the president. The nation was in shock.
John Magufuli, an autocrat nicknamed the “Bulldozer”, had denied the existence of Covid on Tanzanian territory and refused vaccines. He died after several weeks of unexplained absence, rumored to have contracted the virus.
A pioneer in power
Her death catapulted Samia Suluhu Hassan into history, as she became the first president of Tanzania. Nicknamed “Mama Samia”, she is currently the only female head of government in Africa.
Since taking office, Hassan has given the country a new course: she has been vaccinated in public to encourage the population to do the same, she has lifted the ban on going to school for pregnant girls and initiated economic reforms in order to bring back investors.
The first challenge, Hassan said in an interview in early April at his official residence in the capital, Dodoma, is overcoming the idea that a woman cannot lead Tanzania. “The majority of people were convinced that a woman could not be president and act effectively, Hasan explains. The difficulty was to establish a relationship of trust with the citizens and to show them that indeed I can do it.”
She says other African women leaders – including Liberia’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde (who is not, however, head of government) subsequently lent their support. “They all encouraged me, showed that it was within my reach”, recalls Hasan.
Since coming to power in March 2021, Hassan has emerged as a figure of national unification, willing to challenge the ruling class and determined to give new impetus to her country after five years of isolationism under the leadership of Magufuli, who is
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The New York Times (New York)With 1,600 journalists, 35 overseas bureaus, 130 Pulitzer Prize winners and some 5 million total subscribers, The New York Times is by far the leading daily newspaper in the country, in which one can read “all the news that’s fit to print” (“all information worthy of publication”).
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