Botswana’s former president Festus Mogae, who led \u200bthe diamond-rich nation for a decade \u200cand won praise for good governance and the fight against HIV\/AIDS, has died at the age \u200bof 86, the government said, declaring three \u200bdays of national mourning.<\/p>\n
Mogae served as \u2060Botswana’s third president from 1998 to 2008, \u200bhanding power to his vice president, Ian Khama \u200bin a smooth transition that highlighted the southern African nation’s reputation for political stability.<\/p>\n
An economist by training, \u200bMogae was credited with successful management \u200bof Botswana’s economy. He tackled HIV\/AIDS openly at a \u200ctime \u2060when Botswana faced one of the world’s highest infection rates, and adopted one of the African continent’s most comprehensive programmes against it.<\/p>\n
Born \u200bin Serowe \u200bon August \u206021, 1939, Mogae studied in Britain before joining Botswana’s civil service \u200bshortly after independence in 1966. He \u200bserved \u2060as finance minister and vice president before becoming president.<\/p>\n
Mogae stepped down after the maximum \u2060of \u200btwo terms allowed by the \u200bconstitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Botswana’s former president Festus Mogae, who led \u200bthe diamond-rich nation for a decade \u200cand won praise for good governance and the fight against HIV\/AIDS, has died at the age \u200bof 86, the government said, declaring three \u200bdays of national mourning. Mogae served as \u2060Botswana’s third president from 1998 to 2008, \u200bhanding power to his vice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20824,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[212,5134],"class_list":["post-20822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-botswana","tag-festus-mogae"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20823,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20822\/revisions\/20823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}