Mohammed VI of Morocco

Mohammed ben El Hassan was born 21 August 1963, during his father Hassan II's reign, and grew up in public view, representing the Alawi dynasty from an early age. When he took the throne in 1999, he moved quickly: reforms to women's rights, changes to the family code. The 2011 Arab Spring protests forced his hand again - he answered with a new constitution, passed by referendum that July. He pushed Morocco outward and inward at once: modernising the economy and military, elevating Berber culture and Standard Moroccan Amazigh to official status, making Yennayer a national holiday, courting the U.S., the EU, China, and African neighbours, and in 2020 normalising ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords. His father had been the moderate; he kept that line while staking Morocco's claim to Western Sahara. By 2015 his business empire was worth over $5.2 billion, and a year earlier WikiLeaks cables had surfaced alleging corruption in the palace, his name and his advisors' tangled in the leak.