Are African leaders more likely to die in office?
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Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander. This week, should you get married? But first, there's been sad news from Ethiopia. State television in Ethiopia has announced the death of the country's Prime Minister, Mele Zenawi. Earlier in the year, there was sad news from Ghana.
The president of Ghana, John Atta Mills, has died. He was 68.
Before that, Malawi. The body of the late Malawian leader, Bingu Wamutarika, has been flown back from South Africa more than a week after his death. And before that, more sad news, this time from Guinea-Bissau.
The president of the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, Malam Bakai Senya, has died in a military hospital in Paris.
That's four African leaders who have died in office this year alone. Disruptive for the countries concerned, tragic for the leaders' families, and though this might not be the main concern, a lot of work for reporters.
I seem to be getting an awful lot of calls in the middle of the night telling me an African president had died. And to be honest, I'm getting a bit sick of it.
Simon Allison, a correspondent for the Daily Maverick news website in South Africa, has been trying to answer what to him seems to be the obvious question here.
Why do African presidents keep dying?
So Simon's been doing some investigating, and the resulting article has attracted a lot of attention online.
I found that 2012 has been a particularly bad year for presidential mortality, but the trend goes back a bit further. Going back to 2008, I found that there were nine African presidents...
Why have four African leaders died in office this year?
that had died in office. In the space of four years, to have nine leaders die seems quite excessive. And looking further afield at the rest of the world as a sort of comparison, and I only found three other countries whose president had died in office in the last four years. That was North Korea, Poland, and Barbados in the Caribbean. And that was it.
Our own statistics correspondent Charlotte MacDonald has been having a look to see if there's more to it.
Charlotte. It's certainly true that leaders are dying in office in Africa in higher numbers than on any other continent. In fact, Simon's underestimated the problem. Not nine, but ten have passed away since 2008. Yes, you might think the obvious explanation is that African leaders are older than those of other continents, but that's not really the case. The average age of an African leader is 61, but that's the same as Asia. South American leaders are younger, they're 59 on average, while Europeans are 55. But were the leaders who have died older than average? Yes, their average was 67, but another thing to consider is life expectancy, which among the general population is lower in Africa... than in places like Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Dr George Leeson, a gerontologist from Oxford University in the UK, says a poor childhood can have a lasting impact.
For African presidents, they will, before they become elected as president, have lived a relatively disadvantaged life. So once they get into the presidential office, even though they will be living a lifestyle far, far, far removed from that of their fellow citizens... which would increase their life expectancy in relation to those fellow citizens even more. But they do have an accumulated, disadvantageous lifestyle, which they have to pay back on at some time.
Although not all African leaders will have had poor childhoods, of course. But is there another factor in all of this? Politics.
The stereotypical African leader clings on to power until he drops. Well, Simon Allison isn't sure the facts fit that explanation.
This is true of some of the leaders who died in office, particularly we're talking about Omar Bongo, Conte and Gaddafi, all of whom were old school dictators who were never going to leave power voluntarily. But the others are different. So Meles Zanawi, who just died recently, he has clung on to power for a long time, but also he's only 57.
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