Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has announced he will run for a second, four-year term in elections due in March.

The former general made the announcement in televised comments carried live on Friday.

Winning the election is virtually a foregone conclusion for el-Sissi, who led the military's ouster in 2013 of Egypt's first freely-elected leader, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, before becoming president a year later. None of those who declared their intention to challenge him in the March vote are likely to pose any serious threat to his re-election.

Since 2013, el-Sissi has overseen one of the harshest crackdowns in living memory in Egypt, jailing thousands of Islamists and secular activists behind the popular 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak and curtailing civil liberties.