Angolan President To Step Down in 2018

Angola's president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, will leave active politics in 2018, he said March 11.

The president made his announcement at a congress of the ruling MPLA party, reported state news agency Angop. He has held power since 1979, so during most of the country's civil war (1975-2002) when the MPLA fought rival group Unita in the aftermath of Portugal's exit as a colonial power.

The BBC said that in 2001 Dos Santos said he would not seek office in the next presidential elections, but that these were then abolished under a new constitution, and that he is Africa's second longest-serving leader after Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

In a country where revenues and power stem from oil -- and gas, once its Angola LNG plant resumes exports in 2Q 2016 -- it's significant that one man hinted as a successor is Manuel Domingos Vicente, who was the CEO of state oil and gas company Sonangol from 1999 to 2012 and has been the country's vice president since then.

But he is not a shoe-in, given recent disappointments over the economy and oil and gas revenues. Another name mooted is the president's son, Jose Filomeno de Sousa dos Santos, who heads the country's sovereign wealth fund and is in his late thirties.

The president's family holds several levers of power: his daughter Isabel dos Santos runs the country's largest bank and is reputed to be Africa's richest woman.

Mark Smedley