Julius Nyerere was the first president of the Federal Republic of Tanzania after independence and the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. He sought to achieve a societal renaissance in his country through the "Ujamaa" philosophy as a model of African socialism against Western imperialism.
He was the third African president to voluntarily retire from office in 1985, after Senegalese Leopold Senghor in 1980 and Cameroonian Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982. He died after a struggle with illness in a hospital in London in 1999.