Former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the oil- and diamond-rich state for almost four decades, has died aged 79, the Facebook page of the Angolan presidency says.
He died in Spain where he was being treated for an undisclosed illness.
Mr. Dos Santos will be remembered for ending a long-running civil war in the early 2000s dubbed the “architect of peace”.
But his legacy is soiled by high levels of corruption and human rights violations while he was in power.
Having graduated in petroleum engineering in the Soviet Union in 1969, Dos Santos was only 37 years old when he became Angola’s president a decade later, following the death of the first president, António Agostinho Neto. END.
