Namibia’s President, Hage Geingob, is dead. Geingob died while receiving medical treatment at a local hospital, his office announced on Sunday.
The Namibian presidency said Geingob’s medical team at Lady Pohamba Hospital did its best to help him, but he died with his wife, Monica Geingob, and children by his side, in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Namibia is one of Africa’s most stable democracies.
Angolo Mbumba, Namibia’s acting president, called for calm, saying in the same post that the “Cabinet will convene with immediate effect in order to make the necessary state arrangements in this regard.”
Local media reported Mbumba has called for an urgent cabinet meeting.
According to Namibia’s constitution, there should be an election to choose a new president within 90 days of Geingob’s death.
Geingob was undergoing treatment for cancer. The 82-year-old had a colonoscopy and a gastroscopy on Jan. 8, followed by a biopsy, his office said last month.
He returned home on Jan. 31 from the United States where he had undergone a trial two-day “novel treatment for cancerous cells,” according to his office. In 2014, he said he had survived prostate cancer.
Geingob, president of the southern African nation since 2015, was set to finish his second and final term in office this year. He was the country’s third president since it gained independence in 1990, following more than a century of German and then apartheid South African rule.
