Filipe Nyusi

Filipe Jacinto Nyusi (born 9 February 1959) is a Mozambican politician serving since 2015 as the fourth President of Mozambique.

In 1973, aged 14, he joined FRELIMO and received political and military training at Nachingwea in Tanzania.

He is the current leader of FRELIMO, the party that has governed Mozambique since its independence from Portugal in 1975.

In 1990, he completed his mechanical engineering degree at Antonín Zápotocký Military Academy (VAAZ) in Brno, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic's University of Defense.

Prior to his appointment to the cabinet by President Armando Guebuza, Nyusi worked for the state-owned Mozambique Ports and Railways Authority (CFM).

Previously, no similarly defined high-profile leaders of opposition parties and academics were reported killed since the Peace Accord of 1992 between Renamo and FRELIMO.

From 1993 to 2002, Nyusi served as the President of Clube Ferroviário de Nampula, a top-division football club based in Nampula.

He is also a lecturer at the Nampula campus of the Universidade Pedagógica, a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative, and a member of the National Committee of Fighters of the National Liberation Struggle (Comité Nacional dos Combatentes da Luta de Libertação Nacional).

He received further training in management in India, South Africa, Eswatini, and the United States.

He became the executive director of CFM-Norte, the northern division of the company, in 1995.

He joined the company's board of directors in 2007.

Nyusi served as the Minister of Defense from 2008 to 2014 under Armando Guebuza.

Nyusi took office as Minister of Defence on 27 March 2008, succeeding Tobias Joaquim Dai.

Nyusi's appointment came almost exactly one year after a fire at the Malhazine armory in Maputo and the resulting explosions of munitions killed more than 100 people and destroyed 14,000 homes.

A government-appointed investigative commission concluded that negligence played a role in the disaster, and Dai "was blamed by many for failing to act on time to prevent the loss of life".

In September 2012, Nyusi was elected to the Central Committee of FRELIMO, the ruling party, at its 10th congress.

He won the 2014 and 2019 Mozambican presidential elections as the candidate of FRELIMO.

On 1 March 2014, the FRELIMO Central Committee elected Nyusi as the party's candidate for the 2014 presidential election.

In the first round of voting, he received 46% of the vote—well ahead of the second-place candidate, Luisa Diogo, but short of the majority needed to win outright.

He defeated Diogo in the second round with 68% to her 31%.

Although Nyusi was regarded as relatively obscure compared to the other candidates, he was most closely identified with President Guebuza.

It was generally believed that the selection of Nyusi as FRELIMO's candidate would enable Guebuza, who was required to step down due to term limits, to retain substantial power after leaving office.

Diogo, the defeated candidate, was associated with opposition to Guebuza within the party.

Nyusi and his FRELIMO party won a landslide victory in an election that the opposition branded a "mega fraud".

During his time in office from 2015 to 2018, the poverty reduction trend observed between 2009–11 and 2015 reversed direction; the number of multidimensionally poor people increased from about 21.3 to about 22.2 million people from 2015 to 2018, with the extra million poor people mainly located in rural areas of the central provinces.

Since March 2015, at least 10 high-profile figures have been killed in Mozambique.

These include leaders of opposition parties, journalists, and academics.

Nyusi has also been accused of abuse of power; for example, some 90,000 school desks publicly delivered by Nyusi in September 2018 were manufactured by a company 50% owned by his daughter.

Despite allegations of irregularities the President of the National Election Commission stated that "the elections were free, fair and transparent", with the Constitutional Count verifying the result on 23 December 2019.

However, according to the European Union Election Observation Mission in Mozambique, Commonwealth Observer Group, and the U.S. Embassy in Mozambique, the 2019 election was characterized by instances of fraud, intimidation, and the murders of opposition leaders and election observers.

The President of the National Election Commission acknowledged that the 2019 elections were marked by irregularities, stating that "that is why when [the National Election Commission] announced the results, nobody heard [the National Election Commission] saying that the elections were free, fair and transparent."

Furthermore, court documents filed by Jean Boustani in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in 2019 and by Iskandar Safa in The High Court of Justice in London in 2021 alleged that Nyusi received up to 2 million dollars in bribes in 2014 in connection with illegal loans (also known as "hidden debts"), which caused an economic crisis in Mozambique when he was the Minister of Defense and/or afterward.

His office time has been marked by the escalation of the war in Mozambique's central and northern regions.

The FRELIMO government has been described as authoritarian by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Monjane et al., and Manning et al.

Nyusi was born in Namau in Mueda District, Cabo Delgado Province, belonging to the Makonde ethnic group.

Both his parents were veterans of the liberation movement, FRELIMO.

At the start of the Mozambican War of Independence, he was taken across the Ruvuma River to neighboring Tanzania, where he was educated at FRELIMO Primary School in Tunduru.

He pursued his secondary education at the FRELIMO school at Mariri in Cabo Delgado and at Samora Machel Secondary School in Beira.

Additionally, he has served as the Chairman of the Southern African Development Community since August 2020.

During his time in office, President Nyusi has promoted peace and security, and signed multiple agreements with the main opposition parties, RENAMO, to bring a definitive and lasting peace to Mozambique.