José Eduardo dos Santos

José Eduardo dos Santos was born in the Sambizanga neighborhood of Luanda, Portuguese Angola. He joined the anti-colonial People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) as a student in 1961, studying petroleum engineering and telecommunications on an MPLA scholarship at the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute in Baku, USSR.

Upon the death of founding President Agostinho Neto in September 1979, the 37-year-old dos Santos was elected President of Angola and commander-in-chief. During his 38-year reign, dos Santos navigated Angola through a devastating proxy war pitting his Soviet- and Cuban-backed MPLA against Jonas Savimbi's South African- and US-backed UNITA. Following Savimbi's battlefield death in 2002, dos Santos negotiated the peace accords that ended the 27-year civil war. Leveraging Angola's booming offshore oil reserves, he partnered with China to rebuild roads, railways, and bridges, transforming Luanda into a major metropolis before peacefully stepping down in 2017 in favor of João Lourenço.