Daniel Noboa
Daniel Noboa has been President of Ecuador since November 2023, elected at thirty-five as the youngest in the country's history, and re-elected in 2025. Born in Miami in 1987, he is the son of Álvaro Noboa, the banana magnate reckoned among Ecuador's richest men, who ran for the presidency five times without winning. He studied business administration at New York University and took degrees at Harvard Kennedy School, George Washington University and Northwestern. He founded a shipping and events company at eighteen and worked in his father's Noboa Corporation, running its commercial operations. He was elected to the National Assembly in 2021 and chaired its economic development committee. He was a marginal candidate in the 2023 snap election, called after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the legislature to pre-empt his own impeachment, and rose sharply after a televised debate. The campaign was overshadowed by the assassination of the anti-corruption candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Quito ten days before the first round. His term has been defined by the collapse of public security. Ecuador, once among the safer countries in the region, became a transit hub for Colombian and Peruvian cocaine and its homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world. In January 2024, after a gang leader escaped and armed men seized a television studio live on air, Noboa declared an internal armed conflict, designated twenty-two gangs as terrorist organisations and deployed the military to the streets and prisons. He also authorised a police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito in April 2024 to seize a former vice-president who had been granted asylum, breaching diplomatic inviolability and prompting Mexico to sever relations and take the case to the International Court of Justice.
- Lived: 1987 CE – ?
- Nationality: Ecuadorian
- Roles: President of Ecuador (2023-present)
