ANKARA

Angola’s long-serving head of state has said he will leave office in 2018, according to the country's national broadcaster, TPA.

"I made the decision to leave active politics in 2018," Jose Eduardo dos Santos said during a meeting of his ruling party in Luanda on Friday.

Dos Santos is Africa's second-longest serving head of state after Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea's president who has been in office for 36 years.

In recent years, rights groups across the world, including Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International and Transparency International have accused Angola’s dos Santos regime of authoritarian rule, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and torture.

President dos Santos has been in power since 1979. He is accused of positioning close members of his family to own the country's major businesses.

His daughter, Isabel dos Santos, is Africa's richest woman, according to Forbes magazine.

Dos Santos joined the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) during the Angolan struggle for independence in the early 1960s while he was still a schoolboy.

Angola gained its independence in 1975 from Portugal following a 13-year war.