Zambian Vice President Guy Scott has been named acting leader following the death of President Michael Sata, making him Africa's first white head of state since South Africa's FW de Klerk.
Defence and Justice Minister Edgar Lungu said on Wednesday that Scott would occupy the office until a fresh election is held, likely to be within 90 days.
"Dr Scott will act as president of the Republic of Zambia until the country goes for a presidential by-election," said Lungu.
The announcement averts a possible constitutional crisis in which Lungu and Scott would vie for power.
Lungu, a powerful figure in the ruling Patriotic Front, had been named acting president by Sata when the late leader left for Britain for medical treatment.
Sata died on Tuesday at London's Edward VII Hospital of an undisclosed ailment.
"The government remains intact and so does the Patriotic Front as a party. We shall update on each decision made in this regard," Lungu said.
Scott and Lungu belong to rival factions within the ruling party.
However, Scott, 70, is not eligible to become president because of foreign parentage rules in Zambia's 1996 constitution.
Scott, a white Zambian of Scottish descent, became the country's acting president on Wednesday, making him the first white leader of a sub-Saharan African nation since F.W. de Klerk, the apartheid-era head of South Africa who was voted out of power in 1994.
The interim president is known for his undiplomatic candour, once branding South Africans as "backward" and the Indian city of Jaipur "a terrible dump".
In an interview with London's Guardian newspaper he said that Sata once asked him "what would you be if you weren't white?"
"I said, 'The president?' That shut him up," Scott recalled.
Zambian Vice President Guy Scott has been named acting head of state following the death of President Michael Sata.
