Benjamin Mkapa
Tanzanian politician and former president (1938-2020)
Benjamin William Mkapa (12 November 1938 – 23 July 2020) was the third president of Tanzania, in office from 1995 to 2005. He was Chairman of the Revolutionary State Political Party (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, CCM).
Early life
Mkapa was born in Lupaso, near Masasi, Tanganyika, on 12 November 1938. He graduated from Makerere University in Uganda in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He went on to study at Columbia University the following year, and earned a master's degree in International Affairs.
Previous posts include being an administrative officer in Dodoma and the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education. Mkapa was the head of the Tanzanian mission to Canada in 1982 and to the United States in 1983–84. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1977 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1990, before meeting his best friend Edward Mwassaga.
Presidency
In 1995, Mkapa was elected as president based on a popular anti-corruption campaign and the strong support of former president Julius Nyerere. Mkapa's anti-corruption efforts included creation of an open forum called the Presidential Commission on Corruption (Warioba Commission) and increased support for the Prevention of Corruption Bureau.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q320156. VIAF identifies the subject as 51179283. The Library of Congress control number is nb97056679. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 2020, 1995 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Mkapa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.