Jakaya Kikwete

Kikwete was born on 7 October 1950 in the village of Msoga in Chalinze District and was raised there; he is of Kwere heritage. He attended primary and secondary schools in Arusha, Pwani and Tanga regions and studied economics at the University of Dar es Salaam. ¹ He served in the Tanzanian army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel, and fought in the Uganda–Tanzania War. ¹

Kikwete served as minister of finance in 1994 and then as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 27 November 1995 to 21 December 2005 under President Benjamin Mkapa, while also sitting as member of parliament for Chalinze. ¹ Elected president, he took office on 21 December 2005 and served two terms until 5 November 2015. He was chairperson of the African Union from January 2008 to February 2009 and chairman of the Southern African Development Community Troika on Peace, Defence and Security in 2012–2013. ¹

On 31 January 2016 the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Zuma, appointed Kikwete the African Union's High Representative for Libya, to lead the Union's efforts for peace and stability there; the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him to the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, and since 2022 he has co-chaired the Commission for Universal Health convened by Chatham House. ¹

Kikwete is married to Salma Kikwete, whom he married in 1989, and is an avid sports enthusiast who played basketball competitively at school and has been a patron of the Tanzania Basketball Federation. ¹ The English article's personal-life section states that he is a Muslim, citing a Reuters news report on his warning of rising religious tensions before a referendum; the Arabic article's infobox gives his religion as Islam, and Wikidata likewise gives Islam with no branch. ^{1 2 3}

Kikwete's Muslim identity is attested in a text, as above, but no source names a religious school for him: an identity statement, an infobox field and a single structured value never name a school. ^{1 2 3} His faith is therefore recorded as unknown. Neither his predecessor Benjamin Mkapa nor his successor John Magufuli has a record in the museum, so no succession relation is written. ¹

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