Mozambique - Head of Government

HE Mr Armando Emilio Guebuza was re-elected to a second term in office as President of Mozambique following a decisive victory at the presidential election on 28 October 2009. He first took office in February 2005.

Mr Guebuza was the Secretary-General of Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) in 2002 and served as its Chief Whip in the first multiparty Parliament which emerged after the 1994 general election. He headed the government delegation to the Rome talks with the Mozambican National Resistance, RENAMO, which culminated in the Rome Peace Agreement of 2 October 1992.

Mr Guebuza was also involved in the Burundi Peace Process, and in 1997 he was in charge of the Commission on the Nature of the Burundi Conflict, Problems of Genocide, Exclusion and Solutions. He chaired the Commission on Guarantees for the Implementation of the Peace Agreement in 2000.

Mr Guebuza was appointed Minister of Transport and Communications in 1986 and Minister in the President’s Office with responsibility for Agriculture, Trade, Light Industry and Tourism from 1984 to 1986. He was Minister of the Interior from 1983 to 1985, and from 1975 to 1977. From 1966 to 1978, Mr Guebuza held various posts in FRELIMO, including Minister of Home Affairs in the Transition Government formed after the Lusaka Agreement of 1974, as well as the post of Deputy Minister of National Defence from 1977 to 1978. He was appointed Secretary for Education and Culture in 1966. Mr Guebuza has been a FRELIMO Central Committee member since 1966, after joining FRELIMO in 1963.

He was born on 20 January 1943 in Murrupula, Nampula Province, Mozambique.