Soumaïla Cissé (born December 20, 1949) is a Malian politician who served in the government of Mali as Minister of Finance from 1993 to 2000. He twice stood unsuccessfully as a presidential candidate, in 2002 and 2013; on both occasions he was defeated in a second round of voting. Since 2014 he has been President of the Union for the Republic and Democracy, a political party.Born in Timbuctu, Soumaïla Cissé studied at l'Institut des Sciences de l'Ingénieur de Montpellier in France to become a software engineer. He worked in several large French companies (IBM-France, le Groupe Pechiney, le Groupe Thomson and the aerospace company Air Inter) before returning to Mali in 1984 to work at the Compagnie malienne pour le développement des textiles (CMDT). Wikipedia
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