Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who led the tiny African naiton of Djibouti for more than 20 years as the first president after independence from France, died November 21. He was believed to be 90.

Gouled died at his home in the capital, also called Djibouti.

Gouled installed an authoritarian one-party state dominated by his own Issa clan when he took power in 1977, but resentment from the Afar group erupted into a civil war in the early 1990s. Under pressure from France, he introduced a limited multiparty system in 1992 and a power-sharing deal was struck two years later.

He stepped down in 1999, paving the way for his nephew, Ismail Omar Guelleh, to succeed him. Guelleh was elected in the country’s first multiparty presidential elections that year and was re-elected last year.

A tiny country of about 705,000 at the strategic point where the Red Sea opens into the Indian Ocean, Djibouti has close ties to the West and hosts a brigade from the French Foreign Legion and an American counterterrorism force. With al-most no natural resources, the country depends on support from France and revenue generated by its port on the Gulf of Aden.