Edi Rama is the current Prime Minister of Albania. He was a well-known artist before he ventured into politics. During his early years, Edi Rama showed promise as a basketball player but instead studied fine arts before becoming a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Later on Edi Rama established a successful art career in France, before going back to his native Albania as the Minister of Culture on the invitation of Fatos Nano. However, it was his stint as the Mayor of his home town of Tirana that really catapulted into the national limelight and one of the reasons for that was not only the fact that he remained at the post for eleven years but because he brought genuine change to the city during his long tenure. In 2005, he became the head of the Socialist Party and after a rocky time during which the party lost the general elections; Edi Rama led them to form the government in 2013 albeit with coalition partners.