The rules on what it takes to be a world leader are rapidly changing

It used to be policemen who were getting younger, now it seems it is world leaders.

On Tuesday, Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu became the latest leader under 40 to take office.

The 38-year-old is now officially Kosovo’s youngest-ever president and she is also one of the youngest heads of state in the world.

It is a trend that has been replicated elsewhere in Europe in recent years.

The current Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, is 34 and is already into his second term in office. Kurz, if anyone wants to feel old, first took charge of his country aged 31 and was born after Live Aid, the Chernobyl disaster and just two months before Oprah Winfrey launched her nationally syndicated chat show in the US.

He is not alone in being a new youthful face of leadership. Sanna Marin is Finland’s prime minister, taking office after a month after celebrating her 34th birthday. Nayib Bukele has ruled El Salvador since 2019 and is still 100 days or more short of his 40th birthday.

And undoubtedly one of the most celebrated leaders on the global stage in recent times has been New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, a relative old-timer compared to the likes of Kurz, as she will celebrate her 41st birthday this year.

Read more:

Before them was France’s Emmanuel Macron, aged 39 when he marched into the Elysee. He was pretty much the same age as Ireland’s Leo Varadkar when he became Taoiseach.

The trend is not reflected everywhere, of course, and most notably among world powers. The US has just elected its oldest-ever president, 78-year-old Joe Biden. China has a leader who will celebrate his 68th birthday in two months, India’s Narendra Modi is 70 and Russia’s leader – you know who he is – will turn 69 in October.

But the election of a group of younger leaders has led to a greater age spread among those who are rulers, which in turn appears to suggest that those we elect, in many cases and a time of political flux, are no longer just drawn from the same old political backgrounds.

Some have wildly different life experiences before politics, ideologies – Kurz is proof being young does not mean you are necessarily liberal – are openly gay, and increasingly many more are women.  Some, if not all, of the barriers are coming down.

Yours,

David Harding

International editor