UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 50 of 150

Correct — B, Samia Suluhu Hassan. She is Tanzania's first and so far only woman President, and no other name on this list has ever held that office, so the identification is not in doubt. The DATE printed in the question is, however, wrong, and a student should know it. Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in on 19 MARCH 2021 — not April 2022 — two days after the death of President John Magufuli was announced on 17 March. She had been Vice-President since 5 November 2015, elected on the ruling CCM ticket alongside Magufuli, and she succeeded to the presidency under the constitutional line of succession to serve out the remainder of his second term. So by the time this paper was set, on 12 June 2022, she had already been in office for nearly fifteen months; 'in April 2022' corresponds to nothing in her career. Following the 2020 precedent for this series, the card argues the commission's marked answer — option (b) is right, and it is right on the only thing the question can properly be testing, which is the name — while stating plainly that the accompanying date does not match the record.

• (a)Sahle-Work Zewde — The right kind of person, the wrong country. Sahle-Work Zewde was President of ETHIOPIA, not Tanzania, taking office on 25 October 2018 and serving until 7 October 2024; she was Ethiopia's first woman president. She was in office on the date of this exam, which is exactly what makes her the strongest distractor here — a candidate half-remembering 'Africa's woman president' can land on her.
• (c)Ellen Johnson — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was President of LIBERIA from 2006 to 2018, not of Tanzania. She was Africa's first elected woman head of state and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, so she is the name most likely to surface first when a candidate is asked about a woman president in Africa — but her presidency had ended four years before this paper was set.
• (d)None of the above — This is the option a candidate is tempted into precisely because the date in the stem is wrong — noticing that nothing happened in Tanzania in April 2022, they conclude the question describes no one. But option (b) names a real person who really is Tanzania's first woman President, so 'none of the above' is false. In an examination, a defective date does not convert a correct name into no answer at all; the commission's key marks (b).

Samia Suluhu Hassan is from Zanzibar and rose through Zanzibari and then Union politics, serving as a minister, as a member of the constitutional review body and, from November 2015, as Vice-President of the United Republic of Tanzania. Tanzania's constitution provides that the Vice-President succeeds on the death of the President and completes the unexpired term, which is what happened on 19 March 2021 when Magufuli's death was announced. Her succession was widely noted internationally on two counts: she became Tanzania's first woman head of state, and she moved quickly away from her predecessor's positions on the COVID-19 pandemic, restoring official reporting and a vaccination programme that Magufuli had resisted. As of the June-2022 exam she was serving out that inherited term. To bring the record up to date honestly for a student reading this in 2026: she subsequently contested and won a presidential election in her own right in October 2025 — the result was announced with 97 per cent of the vote — and was sworn in on 3 November 2025.

Two lessons sit inside this small question. The first is about how to read a defective current-affairs stem. When the name and the date in a question disagree, decide which of the two the question is actually testing — here it is plainly the name, since three of the four options are people and only one of them has any connection to Tanzania — and answer that, rather than escaping to 'none of the above'. The second is about how examiners build distractor sets for current affairs. The wrong options are not random: Sahle-Work Zewde and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf are the two other African women most associated with a national presidency, so the set punishes a candidate who has learned the category 'first woman president in Africa' without learning which country each belongs to. Learn office-holders as country–name–date triples, never as names alone.

• Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in as President of Tanzania on 19 March 2021, after the death of President John Magufuli; she is Tanzania's first woman President.
• She had served as Vice-President of Tanzania from 5 November 2015, elected on the CCM ticket with Magufuli, and succeeded to the presidency to serve the remainder of his term.
• Sahle-Work Zewde was President of Ethiopia from 25 October 2018 to 7 October 2024 — Ethiopia's first woman president, and in office on the date of this exam.
• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018, Africa's first elected woman head of state and a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
• Present-day update: Samia Suluhu Hassan won the Tanzanian presidential election of October 2025 in her own right and was sworn in on 3 November 2025.

• Answering 'none of the above' because a date in the stem is wrong. A defective date does not make a correct name incorrect, and the commission's key marks the name — here 19 March 2021 is the true date, but option (b) is still the answer.
• Confusing the three African women presidents in the option set. Sahle-Work Zewde belongs to Ethiopia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to Liberia and Samia Suluhu Hassan to Tanzania — the examiner places all three together precisely to catch a candidate who knows the category but not the countries.
• Anchoring a 'recently appointed' question to today rather than to the exam. This is a June-2022 paper: read every current-affairs item as at 12 June 2022, then note separately what has changed since.

Both commissions test world leaders in the same way — a bare 'who among the following became the first woman X' with three plausible names of the same type — and UPPSC does it every year, on the WTO Director-General in 2021, the New Zealand Prime Minister in 2023 and the Lok Sabha's first woman Speaker in 2023. The reliable preparation is a running table of who took which office in the twelve to eighteen months before the exam date, with the predecessor named alongside.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Samia Suluhu Hassan succeeded to the presidency of Tanzania in March 2021 following the death of which President ?

  • (a)Jakaya Kikwete
  • (b)John Magufuli
  • (c)Benjamin Mkapa
  • (d)Julius Nyerere

  Answer(b) John Magufuli — she had been his Vice-President since November 2015 and was sworn in on 19 March 2021 to serve out the remainder of his second term. Nyerere, Mkapa and Kikwete are earlier Tanzanian presidents.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sahle-Work Zewde, who took office in October 2018, was the first woman President of which country ?

  • (a)Tanzania
  • (b)Liberia
  • (c)Ethiopia
  • (d)Malawi

  Answer(c) Ethiopia — she served as Ethiopia's first woman president from 25 October 2018 to 7 October 2024. Liberia's first woman president was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (2006–2018) and Tanzania's was Samia Suluhu Hassan (from March 2021).