President Sisi restructures Grand Egyptian Museum’s board of trustees

CAIRO – 5 January 2025: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi issued Decree 600/2024 to restructure the Board of Trustees of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) for a new three-year term.

The board, chaired by the president, includes prominent international and Egyptian figures as members, with diverse backgrounds.

International members include UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan bin Salman, the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Japan’s Tarō Asō, and Yuji Kurihara.

Egyptian members include the Ministers of Tourism and Antiquities, Culture, and Finance, along with the director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, veteran archaeologist Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Culture Farouk Hosny, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Egypt Hisham Okasha.

The board also includes Director-General/ Executive Director of the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV)/ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Ghada Waly, and former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities and Egyptian candidate for UNESCO general director post Khaled El-Anani.

The decree was published in the official Gazette on Saturday.

The Grand Egyptian Museum, currently in the soft opening stage, is set to be officially opened in 2025.

The museum stands as the largest archaeological museum in the world dedicated to a single civilization, narrating over 700,000 years of ancient Egyptian history.