Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has announced plans for the country’s main military academy to train potential future leaders over 30 months before his presidential term ends in 2030, placing the armed forces at the centre of a proposed programme to prepare candidates for senior state positions.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony at the Egyptian Military Academy on Saturday, el-Sissi said a committee would establish selection criteria and draft legislation governing the programme. The committee would be overseen by the speaker of parliament and include intellectuals, politicians and the ministers of higher education and justice.
El-Sissi said the programme would be open to people holding PhDs from reputable Egyptian and foreign universities. Participants would spend two and a half years at the academy studying the state, its resources and how to preserve them. Graduates could go on to leadership positions ranging from the presidency and government ministries to governorates and parliament.
The president said Egyptians would be able to “elect and choose from among” the programme’s graduates, although he did not explain how participants would be nominated for elected office or selected for appointed positions. Details of the proposed selection process and the legal framework for the programme were not provided.
“I will not leave the Egyptian state except when it is replete with sons and daughters capable of assuming responsibility,” el-Sissi said, describing the initiative as part of his efforts to prepare people to take responsibility for governing the country.
The announcement was accompanied by an unequivocal statement about his own political future. El-Sissi reiterated that Egypt’s constitution would not be amended and said his departure from office at the end of his current term in 2030 was settled.
“The end of my presidential term in 2030 is a matter that has been completely settled and will not be discussed,” he said.
El-Sissi, 71, is serving a six-year term after being re-elected in December 2023. Constitutional amendments approved in a 2019 referendum extended presidential terms from four years to six and allowed him to seek a third term, enabling him to remain in office until 2030.
The proposed leadership programme would give the Egyptian Military Academy a central role in preparing people for senior civilian and political responsibilities. The initiative comes as the armed forces have expanded their involvement in Egypt’s economy and civilian affairs under el-Sissi, a former general who became president in 2014.
His rise to power followed the removal of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, in 2013. Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted by the military following mass protests against his government. El-Sissi, who was then a senior military figure, subsequently became president and oversaw a crackdown on the Brotherhood, the Middle East’s oldest Islamist organisation.
The proposed programme places the military academy within a broader plan to prepare future leaders across the Egyptian state, although the president has not specified how its graduates would enter public office or how the programme would operate alongside existing political and electoral processes.
