By Emmanuel Nduka
Jimmy Carter, America’s former and oldest living president, has died, aged 100 years old.
The Carter Centre said its founder died on Sunday in Plains, the town where he was born in Georgia.
Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th US president when he defeated former president Gerald Ford in 1976.
The Georgia native served a single term as president and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The final year of his administration was dominated by a hostage crisis in Iran, when 52 Americans were taken captive at the US embassy in November 1979.
On the day he left office, 20 January 1981, the hostages were released. Carter had continued negotiations behind the scenes, even after his election defeat.
In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to avoid conflict around the world.
“Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the Carter Centre wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
When his wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96, in November 2023, the former president went to the memorial service held in her honour in Atlanta, Georgia.
In February 2023, it was revealed he was receiving hospice care and would “spend his remaining time at home with his family”.
Carter had decided against “additional medical intervention” following a series of brief hospital stays, the Carter Centre said in a statement at the time.
