Tanzania’s First Gentleman Dies in Zanzibar

Hafidh Ameir Hassan, husband of President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Tanzania’s first gentleman since 2021, died on Monday morning in Zanzibar while under treatment for a heart condition, Vice President Deogratius Ndejembi said.

Ndejembi announced that Hassan died at 8 a.m. at Emilio Mzena Memorial Hospital. He offered condolences to the president, the family and the country and said funeral arrangements were under way in Kizimkazi, Zanzibar, the couple’s home islands and a semi-autonomous part of the union. Hassan became first gentleman when his wife succeeded John Magufuli and took office as Tanzania’s first woman president.

He was an agriculturalist by training and kept that work largely separate from politics. The couple married in 1978. Samia Suluhu Hassan rose through Zanzibar government posts and later served as vice president under Magufuli before she was sworn in as president in March 2021. Friends and official accounts describe Ameir as a private figure who stayed out of the campaign spotlight even while supporting her career. They had four children – three sons and a daughter, Mwanu Hafidh Ameir, who sits in Zanzibar’s House of Representatives.

President Hassan is in a second term after a 2025 election she won with more than 97 percent of the vote. Candidates from the two main opposition parties were barred from running. Kenyan President William Ruto said she had lost a lifelong companion, her children a father and Tanzania a distinguished son. Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye also sent condolences.

The office of first gentleman had no constitutional executive power. What it carried, in Ameir’s case, was a public reminder that the country’s first woman head of state had a partner who chose the farm and the family house over the podium. Burial in Kizimkazi will return him to the islands where that life began.