President Joaquim Chissano appointed Mozambique’s first woman prime minister on Tuesday to replace fellow independence war veteran Pascoal Mocumbi, who is leaving to take up the top position in an international health body.
The new Prime Minister is Planning and Finance Minister Luisa Diogo, who will retain that portfolio, state radio reported.
She is an experienced economist with extensive experience in the administration of state finances.
Diogo was born on April 11, 1958 in the Mague district of the central province of Tete. She went to school in Tete before moving to Maputo, where she studied accountancy at the Maputo Commercial Institute. Diogo has held several senior positions in the ministry of finance since 1986, including national budget director. She also worked as a programme officer in the World Bank office in Maputo.
Diogo holds a master’s degree in financial economics from a London university. From 1994 to 1999, she was deputy planning and finance minister and was promoted to minister in 2000. Diogo will lead the government until general elections due late this year. She replaces long-serving prime minister Pascoal Mocumbi, a medical doctor by profession.
Mocumbi will become high commissioner of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Programme, a new scheme to enable clinical trials for drugs and vaccines against HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. He had been one of the three candidates for the top leadership of the UN World Health Organisation.
Mocumbi studied in Portugal and France in the early 1960s before joining the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) at the start of the independence struggle in 1964. He then went to study in Switzerland where he graduated as a doctor.
After Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975, Mocumbi served as provincial director of health in the central province of Sofala. He was health minister between 1980-1987 and then became foreign minister until 1994.
He was promoted to prime minister following the country’s first multi-party elections in 1994. – Sapa-AFP