Mahamadou Issoufou (born 1952) is a Nigerien politician who has been President of Niger since 7 April 2011. Issoufou was Prime Minister of Niger from 1993 to 1994, President of the National Assembly from 1995 to 1996, and was a candidate in each presidential election since 1993. He led the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS-Tarayya), a social democratic party, from its foundation in 1990 until his election as President of Niger in 2011. During the Presidency of Mamadou Tandja (1999–2010), Issoufou was the main opposition leader.

Issoufou, an ethnic Hausa, was born in the town of Dandaji in Tahoua Department. An engineer by trade, he served as National Director of Mines from 1980 to 1985 before becoming Secretary-General of the Mining Company of Niger (SOMAIR). He is married to Aïssata Issoufou, and to second wife Dr Malika Issoufou Mahamadou.

In February 1993, the country's first multiparty legislative and presidential elections were held. In the parliamentary election, Issoufou's party, the PNDS, won 13 seats in the National Assembly, and Issoufou himself won a seat as a PNDS candidate in Tahoua constituency.

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa ɔlɑ̃d]; born 12 August 1954) is the 24th President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He previously served as the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008 and as a Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze's 1st Constituency from 1988 to 1993 and then again from 1997 to 2012. He also served as the Mayor of Tulle from 2001 to 2008 and the President of the General Council of Corrèze from 2008 to 2012.

He was elected President of France on 6 May 2012, defeating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, and was inaugurated on 15 May. He is the second Socialist President of the Fifth French Republic, after François Mitterrand who served from 1981 to 1995.

Hollande was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, Upper Normandy, to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run for the extreme right in local politics." The surname "Hollande" is "believed to come from Calvinist ancestors who escaped Holland (the Netherlands) in the 16th century and took the name of their old country." Hollande was raised Catholic but quietly rebelled against the strict religious brothers chosen by his father to educate him. The family moved to Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, when Hollande was 13.