Cameroon's President, world's oldest head of state, seeks to extend rule to age 99

Globe and Mail

16-07-2025

In the latest extreme example of the gerontocracy that dominates many African countries, Cameroon's 92-year-old President Paul Biya has announced he will seek to extend his term for another seven years.
Mr. Biya, the world's oldest head of state, has ruled Cameroon for 43 years. He routinely disappears from public view for weeks or even months at a time, often to spend time at a luxury hotel in Switzerland. His election candidacy was disclosed in a brief social-media post this week.
Of the world's 10 longest-serving political leaders, more than half are in Africa, and none are showing any signs of retiring. Most are at the head of repressive regimes, including Mr. Biya and the 80-year-old Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who recently launched his own re-election campaign after nearly four decades in power.
'I cannot shirk my mission,' Mr. Biya said in his social-media post. 'The best is still to come.'
In the last election in 2018, he only made one public campaign appearance, but officially collected 71 per cent of the vote in a disputed result. Last year he vanished from public sight for 42 days, provoking rumours that he had died, while his government ordered a ban on any media discussion of his absence.
On Tuesday, when he was photographed meeting a senior Vatican official, it was the first time Mr. Biya had been seen in public since May 20. In his rare appearances, he has seemed frail and unsteady on his feet. His aides insist that he governs the country by providing detailed written instructions to his cabinet ministers.
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Mr. Biya eliminated term limits in 2008, allowing him to rule indefinitely. He remains the favourite to win this year's election – scheduled for Oct. 12 – but there are growing signs of dissent with his presidency, despite his regime's frequent crackdowns on opposition leaders.
'He's transforming a democratic institution like the presidency into African royalty,' Colbert Gwain, a social activist in Cameroon's northwestern region, said in an interview.
Felix Nkongho Agbor, a lawyer and human-rights advocate, said Mr. Biya's bid to extend his rule is 'a stark reminder of the urgent need for political renewal' in Cameroon and 'a reflection of a system that resists change at all costs.'
Mr. Biya is the front-runner in October's election largely because the opposition is fragmented. In a social-media post, Mr. Agbor said this should be a wake-up call for opposition parties, prompting them to unite and organize a joint campaign.
In a sign of the rising unhappiness with Mr. Biya's lengthy reign, two of his closest allies resigned from his cabinet in recent weeks, announcing their own plans to contest the election.
One of them, former employment minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary, issued an election manifesto in which he complained that Mr. Biya's four decades in power 'has gradually stifled progress, paralyzed our institutions, and broken the bond of trust between the state and its citizens.'
He added: 'A country cannot exist to serve one man. It must live to serve its people. The time has come to return power to the population.'
A national French-language newspaper, Le Messager, covered Mr. Biya's candidacy announcement with a front-page headline that suggested, in crude words, that the country was doomed. Its story said Mr. Biya had presided over decades of poverty and poor governance and is now so weakened by age that he lacks any control over the country.
While some newspapers and activists are willing to speak out, many ordinary people are afraid of reprisals if they talk to the media about Mr. Biya's long rule. In the capital, Yaoundé, a group of young people on motorcycles were gazing at the front-page headline in Le Messager on Monday. One of them ventured that he agreed with the headline, but all of them were too nervous to give their names. One even suggested that the journalist asking the questions might be a spy for the government.
Elderly rulers in Africa are sometimes touted as bulwarks of political stability, but their lengthy reigns can trigger coups or fierce succession battles, and their secret illnesses can be accompanied by destructive power struggles when they refuse to step down.
Robert Mugabe is perhaps the most famous example. After dominating Zimbabwe for decades, he was finally toppled in a military coup in 2017 when he was 93. The final years of his rule were marked by damaging feuds as insiders jostled for power with his wife, Grace.
Among the continent's oldest autocrats today are 83-year-old Teodoro Obiang, who seized power in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in a coup in 1979, and 81-year-old Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has ruled the Republic of Congo for almost all of the past 46 years.
Many such regimes are run by complex presidential clans, which can be fractured as their aging leaders move closer to their likely departure, according to Serge Loungou, a lecturer in political geography at Omar Bongo University in Gabon.
'As such leaders approach an end-of-reign phase, intense succession rivalries tend to play out,' he wrote in a recent commentary.
'These rivalries are fuelled by deep-seated conflicts within presidential families, and can lead to prolonged social and political instability.'