The President

His Excellency Salva Kiir Mayardit is the President of the Republic of South Sudan, chairman of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement (SPLM), and the Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA).

President Kiir replaced the late Dr Garang as leader of the then Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) and First Vice President of the Republic of Sudan when the latter perished in a plane crash on 30 July 2005 after being in office for barely three weeks. He was sworn into the office of First Vice-President of the Republic of Sudan on 11 July 2005 in Khartoum.

H.E. Kiir is a founding member of SPLM/A and was a close comrade-in-arms with the late Dr Garang since the inception of the liberation movement in 1983. He rose through the ranks to become the second in command of the movement and the army. He was actually the leader of the SPLA - the military wing of the movement.

The President was born in 1951 in the Bahr-el-Ghazal region. He joined the liberation war early in his life beginning with the Anyanya 1 in the early 1960s and had risen to a fairly senior position by the time the war ended in 1972 with the signing of the Addis Ababa Accord. Thereafter, he joined the national Sudan army in which he served until 1983 when he joined the SPLM/A.

He is a teetotaler and non-smoker with remarkable military and political experience and qualities. He was involved in the peace negotiations, which ended the years of civil war, right from the beginning. His leadership qualities and experience have earned him respect in the Republic of South Sudan as well as from politicians in the Sudan. He is also a respected statesman in the region, Africa and beyond.

Due to his close comradeship with the late Dr. Garang, he is perceived as the embodiment and assurance of the future of the peace agreement spearheaded by the fallen hero. Indeed, many political analysts and opinion leaders worldwide describe him as the Biblical Joshua who took the mantle of leadership from Moses just as the Israelites were on the verge of entering Canaan and capably established the then fugitives in the Promised Land.