Isaias Afwerki (born 2 February 1946) is the first and only President of Eritrea, in office since the country attained independence in 1993. A revolutionary leader and founding figure of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), Afwerki spent three decades waging an armed struggle against successive Ethiopian governments, culminating in Eritrea’s de facto independence in 1991 and formal statehood after a UN-supervised referendum. He emerged from the liberation war as a dominant nationalist figure, revered by supporters as the architect of Eritrean sovereignty. Since independence, Afwerki has presided over one of the world’s most closed and centralized political systems. Eritrea operates as a one-party state with no national elections, no constitution fully implemented, no independent media, and mandatory, open-ended national service, conditions that have driven widespread emigration and international isolation. Despite this, Afwerki has reasserted himself in recent years as a strategic regional actor in the Horn of Africa, particularly through alliances with Ethiopia and Somalia and opposition to Western and multilateral pressure, positioning Eritrea as an influential—if opaque—geopolitical player.