Background
Abdallah was born in 1924 to a family of rural notables that hailed from Upper Egypt. His cultured, erudite father invested much in his children’s education.
journalist lawyer lecturer politician
Abdallah was born in 1924 to a family of rural notables that hailed from Upper Egypt. His cultured, erudite father invested much in his children’s education.
Educated at Alexandria. After graduating from law school in 1946, Ismail could not pursue serious study of economics in Egypt since there was no Economics faculty (the Economics and Political Science Faculty would eventually be established in the early 1960s), so he traveled to the University of Paris, where he earned a doctoral degree in economics in 1951 (he wrote his dissertation on the theory of money).
On his return from France as a Marxist he became a lecturer in law at Alexandria University. In 1955 he was appointed secretary-general of the Communist Party in Egypt. As the party was banned he was arrested in 1956 and released after being tortured. He remained a clandestine member of the Communist Party’s central committee while occupying the chair of economics at Alexandria University.
After his release from five years of imprisonment in 1964 he gradually worked his way into a position of influence. By 1966 he was editor of the journal “Dar al Maarif” and a member of the central committee of the Arab Socialist Union, at that time headed by Nasser. In November 1968 he was appointed director of the Economic Research Organisation in Cairo and two years later was head of the National Planning Institute.
President Sadat brought him into government in May 1971 as Deputy Minister of Planning. He retained the post as Minister of State for Planning in January 1972 when Aziz Sidki formed his cabinet. He negotiated credits from Russia for the 10-year plan when Soviet Foreign Trade Minister Patolichev visited Cairo in January 1972. His influence was somewhat diminished when Sadat ended the Soviet military presence in Egypt in July 1972 and general relations with Russia cooled. But as Sadat began improving relations again Abdallah remained in the new government formed on March 27, 1973, after the fall of Sidki.
Marxist intellectual seemingly indestructible in politics, having suffered imprisonment and torture more than once and re-emerged as one of the country’s leading economists. On the very day Nasser named him economic adviser to the President he was consigned to prison in January 1959 and was kept there for five years.
President of the Council on the socio-economic problems of the African continent.
Journalist, lawyer and lecturer with fluent English and French, he has established himself as an authority on planning, respected by both left- and right-wing elements. Not just a theorist experienced in directing economic research in academic circles, he has proved he has a talent in government for devising impressive long-term programmes for economic development.
His cultured, erudite father invested much in his children’s education. Ismail’s sister was one of the first to attend a boarding school established by Nabawiyya Musa, the pioneer advocate of women’s education. Ismail’s early intellectual strivings were nurtured by his father’s extensive library, particularly rich in the classics of Arabic literature.
Abdallah’s time in Paris was not confined to the university library. He mingled in French leftist circles, where he met his future wife, Gulpérie Aflaton, a free-spirited Egyptian woman from an aristocratic family, the sister of equally spirited socialist-feminist activist and painter Injy Aflaton.
