The Biography of the Head of Government
Najla Bouden is a Tunisian geologist and university professor. She is the prime minister of Tunisia and is set to be the first female prime minister in the Arab world. She previously served in the education ministry in 2011.
Bouden was born in 1958 in Dar Chaabane El-Fehri and was raised in Kairouan.
She is an engineer by profession and a professor of higher education at the National Engineering School of Tunis at Tunis El Manar University, having specialized in geosciences.
She has a Ph.D. from the École des Mines de Paris in earthquake engineering. Her work has focused on seismic hazards in Tunis.
Before her current position as Prime Minister, she had held senior roles at the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, including as part of the $70 million World Bank-funded program "PromEssE" to reform and "modernize" university education in order to help alleviate widespread unemployment among Tunisian graduates, a major social issue in the country