Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been President of Egypt since 2014, having removed the country's first freely elected president the year before. Born in Cairo in 1954 and raised in the Gamaliya quarter near Khan el-Khalili, he entered the military academy and made his career in infantry and military intelligence, with training in Britain and at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania. He became head of military intelligence and, after the 2011 revolution that removed Hosni Mubarak, the youngest member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Mohamed Morsi, elected in 2012, appointed him defence minister — reportedly considering him a safely religious officer. Mass protests against Morsi in June 2013 gave Sisi the occasion to depose him on 3 July. In August security forces cleared the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in in Cairo, killing at least 800 people in a day, which Human Rights Watch described as a probable crime against humanity. The Muslim Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation and its leadership imprisoned or sentenced to death. He won the 2014 election with ninety-seven per cent, was re-elected in 2018 after credible challengers were arrested or withdrew, and again in 2023. A 2019 referendum extended presidential terms and allowed him to stay until 2030. His economic programme has been state-led construction on an enormous scale — a new administrative capital, a widened Suez Canal, road networks — financed by borrowing, alongside IMF-mandated subsidy cuts and repeated devaluations that cut real incomes sharply. The military's economic role expanded considerably. Egypt has faced an insurgency in North Sinai, and under him has held the Rafah crossing and mediated between Israel and Hamas.
- Lived: 1954 CE – ?
- Nationality: Egyptian
- Roles: President of Egypt (2014-present)
