Of the world’s 30 longest-serving leaders – some would call them dictators – 14 are in Africa. Can you guess which ones make the top-10 list?
1. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea, 33 years, 3 months
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been ruling the tiny, oil-rich West African nation since overthrowing his uncle Marcias in August, 1979, in a bloody palace coup. And While Equatorial Guinea has one of the world’s highest per capita incomes, it ranks quite poorly on the U.N. Human Development Index with the majority of the population lacking basic necessities like clean drinking water.
2. Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, Angola, 33 years, 2 months
Seizing power after the natural death of his predecessor, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos lags just one month behind Obiang, and he comes with an equally unsavory human rights record. According the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), for instance, Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer and the seventh-largest supplier to the U.S.. The country is also the world’s fourth-largest producer of rough diamonds. Yet despite these plentiful resources, the people of Angola not directly related to the president remain desperately poor with 68 percent of the population living below the poverty line and life expectancy topping out at 41 years.
3. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, 33 years, 7 months
Mugabe has been running Zimbabwe since the country gained independence in 1980 – first as prime minister and then from 1987 as president. Despite his age -nearly 90 – Mugabe has vowed he will not step down from his post.
4. Paul Biya, Cameroon, 31 years
Cameroon’s president took over from President Ahmadou Ahidjo in November 1982 and has been in power of the oil-rich nation in Central Africa ever since.
5. Denis Sassou Nguesso, Republic of the Congo, 29 years, 9 months
If he hadn’t lost control of the Congo for five years in 1992, Sassou Nguesso would be at the very top of this list. He first seized power of the country in a February 1979 coup, but lost the country’s first multi-party elections in 1992. After a 1997 civil war, however, he was back in control and was re-elected in 2004 for another seven-year term.
6. King Mswati III, Swaziland, 28 years, 7 months
Sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch has been ruling his landlocked country since he was crowed in April 1986 at the age of 18 – a. At the time he was the world’s youngest ruling monarch.
7. Yoweri Museveni, Uganda, 27 years, 11 months
Yoweri Museveni seized Kampala in January 1986 following a five-year guerrilla war and declared himself Uganda’s president. Shortly after taking power he banned multiparty politics, although he re-introduced the system again in 1996. Not that it particularly mattered, as Museveni won a fourth term in office in 2011 despite third-time opponent Kizza Besigye’s cries of foul play.
8. Blaise Compaoré, Burkina Faso, 26 years, 1 month
Blaise Campaore has been running Burkina Faso since deposing predecessor Thomas Sankara in an October 1987 coup. Since then he has been winning “landslide victories” (contested by the opposition) in the presidential polls – taking 80 percent of the vote in 2010. And although a law in Burkino Faso was passed in 2005 prohibiting presidents from serving more than two terms, Campoare doesn’t have to abide by it as his country’s constitutional court ruled it could not be applied retroactively.
9. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan, 24 years, 5 months
In June 1989, Al-Bashir overthrew the democratically elected civilian government and appointed himself president in a bloodless coup. Since he took office his country has been in a state of civil war with more than 1 million reported dead. In March 2009, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir – a first for a sitting head of state – for instigating crimes against humanity.
10. Idriss Déby Itno, Chad, 22 years 11 months
Déby seized control of Chad during a rebellion against then-President Hissène Habré in December 1990 and has since managed to survive a number of attempts to overthrow him.
