By Bonifacio Antonio – SANF 04 no 11
Mozambique has a new Prime Minister, Luisa Diogo, who is also the Minister of Finance and the first woman to serve in either position.
Diogo will combine the posts of Prime Minister and Finance Minister, according to an announcement from the office of the president.
President Joaquim Chissano recently accepted the resignation of Pascoal Mocumbi, who has served as prime minister for the past 10 years.
Mocumbi, a medical doctor, is leaving the government at his own request, in order to take up the post, as from May, of High Commissioner of a new international health body, the Europe-Developing Countries Clinical Trial Partnership (EDCTP). This organisation has been set up to research and develop new drugs, microbicides and vaccines, particularly against HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Mocumbi was born in Maputo on 10 April 1944 and did his secondary education there, at Josina Machel Secondary School. But he spent most of his childhood in Inhambane province.
From the late 1950s he was active in the Nucelus of African Secondary Students of Mozambique (NESAM), and was elected to its leadership. In 1961, he was a founder member of the National Union of Mozambican Students (UNEMO), and became General Secretary and later Deputy President of this organisation. By this time he had started a medical course in Lisbon – but for political reasons he left Portugal for France in 1961, and studied at the University of Poitiers until 1963.
In 1962 he returned to Africa briefly to take part in the creation of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in Dar es Salaam, and helped to draft its statutes. From 1965 to 1967, he was Frelimo’s permanent representative in Algeria.
In 1967, Mocumbi resumed his medical studies in the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and graduated as a doctor in 1973. He worked in the St. Loup Hospital in Switzerland from 1973 to 1975, specialising in obstetrics and paediatrics.
Mocumbi took his first government position in 1976, soon after independence, when he was appointed director of health in the central province of Sofala, combining this post with that of provincial chief doctor.
The country’s first president, Samora Machel, appointed Mocumbi as Minister of Health in 1980, a post he held until 1987. President Chissano then appointed him Foreign Minister, and he was at the helm of Mozambican diplomacy until his promotion to Prime Minister in 1994.
The new prime minister, Luisa Diogo, will retain her post as finance minister until national elections are held later this year. She has occupied the position for the past five years, and has gained wide respect nationally, as well as in the regional and international communities.
Diogo was born on 11 April 1958 in the western province of Tete. She was only 17 when the country won its independence in 1975, thus she took no part in the armed struggle for independence waged by Frelimo.
Her appointment can be viewed as passing the baton from the generation that fought for independence to the one that has been trained since independence.
She did her primary education in Tete city, and then studied at the Tete Commercial School until 1974. She completed her mid-level education after independence at the Maputo Commercial Institute, and studied economics at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in 1983.
Diogo took her masters degree in finance economics by correspondence from the University of London, graduating in 1992.
She began working in the Finance Ministry in 1980, and became a department head in 1986. Between 1989 and 1992 she was National Budget Director. From 1993-1994, Diogo was the World Bank Programme Officer in Mozambique.
After the 1994 general elections, she accepted Chissano’s invitation to leave the World Bank and join the government as Deputy Finance Minister. She was promoted to full minister after the December 1999 elections. (SARDC)
