Edgar Lungu, former Zambian president, dead at 68

Zambian President Edgar Lungu arrives to give a press briefing on July 6, 2017 at the Zambian State House in Lusaka. [AFP]

Zambia's former president Edgar Lungu, who held power for almost seven years until 2021, died Thursday in a hospital in South Africa at the age of 68, his party and family announced.

Lungu had been receiving specialised medical treatment in a clinic in Pretoria, the Patriotic Front, his political party, said in a statement.

"My father had been under medical supervision in recent weeks," his daughter Tasila Lungu-Mwansa announced in a video shared on social media.

"His condition was managed with dignity and privacy with support from all well-wishers," she said, without providing details of the cause of his death.

Lungu had suffered from recurring achalasia, a condition caused by narrowing of the oesophagus, for which he had been treated in South Africa.

Lungu, a trained military officer and lawyer, stepped down from the presidency in 2021 when veteran opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema, the current president, won elections by a landslide.

He had said he planned to run for president again in the 2026 elections.

He came into power in 2015, after the death in office of his predecessor, Michael Sata, and described himself as an "ordinary Zambian of humble beginnings".