Lagos — PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak, has appointed a software expert, Prof. Ahmed Nazif, to head the Egyptian government as the Prime Minister.

Ahmed Nazif, a 52-year-old Information Technology (IT) and software engineering expert, holds a masters degree in electrical engineering from Cairo University and a doctorate in Computer Engineering from McGill University in Canada.

His appointment by President Mubarak followed the resignation of the previous government on July 9, 2004, and makes Nazif the country's youngest prime minister.

He is the first Egyptian prime minister with no background in economics to be appointed since 1987.

According to the state newspaper al-Ahram and Science Development Network (SciDevNet), the new prime minister is expected to bring his "youthful, fresh blood and scientific thinking" to the administration, so as to help Egypt to become a modern knowledge-based society.

Nazif has already taken a step in this direction by appointing Amr Ezzat Salama, formerly president of Helwan University, as the country's new minister for higher education and scientific research.

Before now, Prof. Nazif had spent 10 years running the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre, which collect economic statistics for ministers.

He had subsequently joined the previous government in 1999 as minister of communications and information technology.

Nazif's achievements include leading the implementation of one of the largest information systems projects in the region, the 'national number project', which allocates each Egyptian citizen a unique number that identifies their name, job, date of birth and address.

Prior to joining the government, Prof. Nazif also supervised the introduction of a national computerized identity card system.

The appointment of the new government comes at the heels of a report, released last month by the Egyptian Council of Economic Competitiveness, calling for measures to improve the competitive position of Egypt's economy through science and technology.