First elected in December 2005, Evo Morales, from the Aymara indigenous group, is the first president to come from the country's indigenous majority.
As a leader of a coca-growers union, he was also the first president to emerge from the social movements.
On election, he promised to govern in favour of Bolivia's indigenous majority, who had suffered centuries of marginalisation and discrimination.
A socialist, his political ideology combines standard left-wing ideas with an emphasis on traditional indigenous Andean values and concepts of social organisation.
But his first move, a few months after taking office, was to begin the process of putting Bolivia's rich gas fields under state control. By the middle of 2006, he had re-nationalised Bolivia's oil and gas industries. The increased tax revenue allowed Bolivia to vastly increase its public investment and helped boost the country's foreign reserves.
With the gas money, President Morales's administration invested heavily in public works projects and social programmes to fight poverty which reduced by 25% during his government. Extreme poverty has dropped by 43%.
He has also pushed for a radical re-interpretation of Bolivian national identity largely through constitutional reform.
Nevertheless, Mr Morales's left-wing policies have worried and in some cases antagonised many middle-class Bolivians who believe he is too radical.
Also, his relations with the US are somewhat strained: he has expelled the US Ambassador and at the UN General Assembly in 2014, he called President Obama "an imperialist".
And despite Bolivia's economic advancements, the country remains one of South America's poorest countries with analysts concerned it is overly dependent on natural resources.
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