By the time he stepped down in 2017, he was the second-longest-serving president in Africa, surpassed only by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

Dos Santos joined the MPLA, then an anti-colonial movement, while still in school, and earned degrees in petroleum engineering and radar communications while studying in the Soviet Union.

Dos Santos held several positions including Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of independent Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto.

After Neto's death in 1979, dos Santos was elected by the MPLA as the country's new president, supported by the Soviet Union and inheriting a civil war against Western-backed anti-communist rebels, most notably UNITA.

By 1991, his government agreed with rebels to introduce a multi-party system, while changing the MPLA's ideology from communism to social democracy.

During the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003 he supported Kabila's government and later that of his son Joseph against several rebel groups loosely allied with UNITA.

A controversial figure, dos Santos received many international awards for his commitment to anti-colonialism and promotion of peace negotiation with rebels to end wars, and was praised for attracting significant foreign investment to Angola's economy.

He attended primary school in Luanda, and received his secondary education at the Liceu Salvador Correia,[8][9] today called Mutu ya Kevela.

[11] The same year, dos Santos was appointed as Angola's first Minister of Foreign Affairs upon independence,[6] and in this capacity he played a key role in obtaining diplomatic recognition for the MPLA government in 1975–1976.

[6] The biggest issue dos Santos had to cope with was the ongoing conflict with the main rival liberation movement, the National Union for the Total Integration of Angola (UNITA).

[11] UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by South Africa and the United States, never fully recognized the legitimacy of MPLA as the ruling government of Angola and triggered several armed conflicts over the years to express its opposition.

On 29 and 30 September 1992, after 16 years of fighting that killed up to 300,000 people, general elections were held in Angola, under United Nations supervision.

[20] A three-day war ensued, during which the Halloween Massacre occurred, when MPLA forces killed tens of thousands of UNITA protestors nationwide.

[21] In 1993, while Savimbi and UNITA refused to give up territory won through battle, the United States, involved in settling peace talks between the two rival parties and leaders in order to work out a power sharing arrangement, decided to withdraw its support from UNITA and officially recognize dos Santos and the MPLA government as the official ruling body in Angola.

[29] After the 2008 Angolan parliamentary election the ruling MPLA won a landslide victory, and it started working on a new constitution which was introduced early in 2010.

[30][31] Dos Santos reportedly escaped an assassination attempt on 24 October 2010, when a vehicle tried to intercept his car as he was returning from the beach with his family.

[36] Once a Marxist-Leninist, dos Santos allowed a partial market economy to emerge as the collapse of the Soviet Union was in progress.

Dos Santos subsequently abandoned Marxism-Leninism completely and allowed Western firms to invest in Angola's major oil fields.

He remained President of the MPLA and was therefore expected to continue playing a key role at the top of Angolan politics through the leadership of the ruling party.

[43] Dos Santos led one of the most corrupt regimes in Africa by ignoring the economic and social needs of Angola and focusing his efforts on amassing wealth for his family and silencing his opposition, while nearly 70% of the population lived on less than $2 a day.

In response to this, dos Santos supposedly began arranging for his daughter to receive the financial kickbacks and assets from these companies.

[45] In what has become known as the Luanda Leaks, a vast network of more than 400 banks, companies, and consultants was revealed to have engaged in money-laundering for the dos Santos family.

The International Monetary Fund reported that 32 billion in oil revenue went missing from the government's ledger before it was found spent on "quasi-fiscal activities".

In 1991, dos Santos married his fourth and final wife, Ana Paula de Lemos, a former flight attendant and model.

According to the newspaper, the choice of the Angolan leader was due to his contribution to the great process of economic and democratic recovery of Angola since the end of the war.