Dar es Salaam. CHADEMA national chairperson Freeman Mbowe has been elected as the co-chairperson of the Democrat Union of Africa (UDA), an alliance of centre-right political parties in Africa, during a conference that took place in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, from November 6 to November 9, 2022.
Mr Mbowe will jointly lead UDA with Louisa Atta- Agyemang, a Ghanaian politician with the country’s ruling party New Patriotic Party (NPP), who was also elected co-chaiperson during the alliance’s annual general meeting.
According to a statement by CHADEMA, the alliance decided to have two chairpersons so as to ensure effective management of its activities, which include “the propagation of the centre-right ideology across the African continent,” the party said.
By becoming UDA’s co-chairperson, Mr Mbowe automatically becomes one of the deputy chairpersons of the International Democrat Union (IDU), an international alliance of centre-right political parties.
In its congratulatory message, the Young Democrat Union of Africa (YDUA), the youth wing of the UDA, said Mr Mbowe is no stranger in the political arena.
“He has suffered political persecution while fighting for a just system in Tanzania,” YDUA’s Secretary General Inna Hengari said in a statement. “His unwavering spirit is an added win for the DUA community.”
On March 4, 2022, Tanzanian authorities freed Mr Mbowe after having spent 226 days in prison after he was accused of terrorism and economic sabotage.
He was freed after the prosecutor’s office said it longer has an interest in pursuing the case that CHADEMA had called trumped up one.
READ MORE: Mbowe Finally Becomes A Free Man After Spending 226 Days in Prison
Hengari said in a statement that Mbowe’s election as UDA’s co-chairperson will allow the opposition leader to bring his experience and strategy to the alliance, the two things he said the alliance needed to drive its vision forward.
“We have no doubt that he will serve Africa’s biggest political alliance with strength and dedication,” a statement quoted Hengari as saying.
Mr Mbowe has already started working, chairing the first board meeting of the UDA, which decided to move the headquarters of its secretariat from Accra, Ghana to South Africa.
CHADEMA is the only member of UDA from Tanzania. The alliance has a total of 17 members from across the African continent, with the four members being the ruling parties.
These are the New Patriotic Party of Ghana; the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) of Malawi; the Istiqlal Party of Morocco; and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) of Sierra Leone.
