By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 1 hour ago, updated 52 minutes ago
Michael Moussa Adamo died of a heart attack, he had just been renewed at the helm of the Foreign Ministry.
Gabonese Foreign Minister Michael Moussa Adamo died in Libreville on Friday January 20 after suffering a heart attack during a ministerial council, the government and a presidency source told AFP.
He was President Ali Bongo Ondimba’s “victim of a heart attack” for more than 30 years and could not be revived “despite the efforts of specialists,” the government said in a brief statement.
“A great diplomat”
Michael Moussa Adamo, 62, “sat down at the start of the Council of Ministers and felt bad,” a source close to the presidential palace told AFP. Taken “unconscious” to a military hospital and placed in intensive care, he succumbed just after noon, according to this source, who asked not to be identified. “He was a very great diplomat, a true statesman. For me he was first and foremost a friend, loyal and loyal, whom I could always count on. It is a great loss for Gabon,” President Bongo responded on Twitter.
Michael Moussa Adamo was born on January 10, 1961 in Makokou in the Northeast and began his career in 1981 as a presenter on national television. A holder of a master’s degree in International Relations and Communications from Boston University, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, the current head of state, in 2000.
The President’s confidant
When he was elected president after the death of his father Omar Bongo Ondimba in 2009 after more than 41 years in power, Michael Moussa Adamo became his special adviser and confidant in the presidential palace for several years. After 10 years as Gabon’s Ambassador to the United States (2011-2020), he became Secretary of Defense in July 2020 and Secretary of State in March 2022.
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Michael Moussa Adamo had just been reappointed as head of diplomacy on Jan. 9 when Bongo appointed a new prime minister, Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, in one of the frequent ministerial reshuffles that has taken place in this small, wealthy Central African country have oil.
resuscitation service
“The medical team at the Presidential Palace took care of him immediately after his illness. He had to be transported unconscious by ambulance to the Omar Bongo Ondimba Military Hospital, where he was placed in intensive care, but despite the efforts of specialists, the death was registered there on 12 :12 p.m.,” the president’s source explained.
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Gabon entered an election year in the summer of 2023 with presidential, parliamentary and local elections. Ali Bongo, the victim of a stroke in October 2018 that kept him away from the political scene for many months, has yet to run for a third term, but there is little doubt that his all-powerful Democratic Party of Gabon (PDG) has announced that he will numerous occasions that he was his “natural candidate”.