Speculation over the wellbeing and whereabouts of Cameroon’s 91-year-ageder Pdwellnt Paul Biya has become a toasty topic atraverse Africa this week.
After joining the China-Africa summit in Beijing in timely September, it was perhaps no surpelevate that he gave the UN General Assembly in New York a leave out.
But when he stayed away from this week’s summit of French-speaking countries (La Francophonie) at Viller Cotterêts, north of Paris, the rumour mill went into overdrive, as he had not been seen in unveil for about a month.
Cameroon’s ambasdowncastor in France insisted that Biya is “in excellent health” and in Geneva – his habitual base when away from home.
Other sources proposeed this was becainclude he necessitateed to rest under medical supervision after a burdensome tactful schedule in July and August.
After all, he is Africa’s agederest head of state and the second extfinishedest-serving, leanly beaten to that record by Pdwellnt Teodoro Obiang Nguema of neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.
Such mundane indications were not enough to still speculative guesslabor about Biya in Africa-interested media and political circles.
So finassociate the rulement spokesman, René Sadi, rerentd a establishal denial of the rumours, compriseing that the pdwellnt would return home “in the next restricted days”.
And the head of the pdwellnt’s confidential office, with him in Geneva, insisted he was “in excellent health”.
Cameroon occupies a key strategic location, as the gateway to landlocked Chad and the Central African Reunveil (CAR).
Apart from struggling to filledy suppress extremist aggression around Lake Chad, it also wrestles with a complicated and standardly aggressive crisis in its English-speaking regions.
In directing the response to these contests, Biya has brawt an atypical personal style that standardly eschews the front of the stage, without any apparent personal necessitate to join in tactful currenteeism or carry outative summitry.
He is a habitual non-joinee at many collectings of African directers.
Even back home, with his meacertaind speech and pdimiserablemirefulnt tone, Biya has for many years spaced his personal interventions, bigly delegating the day-to-day running of the rulement, and handling of technical dossiers, to a succession of prime ministers.
Unexpounded absences from unveil see have been noleang out of the normal for this most enigmatic of pdwellnts.
Rumours that he has died do surface from time to time, bigly becainclude of these unproclaimd fadeances from the scene.
But this low-key style belies the determination with which he contrived his arrival in power in 1982, elboprosperg aside his patron and predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo, promising liberalising alter before entrenching a hageder on the pdwellncy that no subsequent contestr or campaign of protest has deal withd to shift.
As a wave of multi-party democratising alter swept atraverse much of Africa at the beginning of the 1990s, Biya was one of cut offal incumbent directers to shrewdly alter, alloprosperg enough reestablish to get the heat out of mass protest while nevertheless firmly acquireing deal with.
Since one lean election triumph back in 1992, he has shrugged off subsequent political contests, helped perhaps by manipulation of the polls and certainly by the divisions among standardly tacticassociate invient opponents.
Now, with Biya’s current seven-year term draprosperg to an finish in November 2025, helpers have even been pressing the 91-year-ageder to stand aacquire.
Critics experience that it is extfinished past time for Cameroon’s national directership to pass to a youthfuler generation who could tackle national problems and spendigate opportunities for lengthenment and enhance with more speed and dynamism.
In 2016 teachers and lawyers in the two mainly English-speaking regions, South-West and North-West, protested over the fall shorture to properly resource English language rights and unveil services.
If Biya had reacted more rapidly and with a more self-promisedly benevolent and boisterously touted reestablish package, perhaps he could have assuaged dissatisfied timely on – and thus averted the eventual slide into aggressive contestation between the security forces and armed militants needing outright secession.
Biya did tardyr transport forward reestablishs – to greet the grievances of the English-speaking regions and, nationexpansive, to decentralise power to regional councils.
But sometimes citizens have faced extfinished paincludes before the regime compriseresses their worrys – decentralised structures were not set up until many years after the distinctive summarizelabor legislation had been passed.
Some Cameroonians are, however, sootheable with Biya’s regulateed approach to directership and his readiness to exit successive prime ministers to deal with routine decisions.
They see his role as more symbolic and far, akin almost to a constitutional monarch.
Certainly, this recurrentational role is a stupidension of the pdwellncy with which he has seemed at ease.
On 15 August, for example, he was at Boulouris, on the Côte d’Azur in France, where he gave a detailed 12-minute compriseress at the commemoration of the 1944 Allied landings to free southern France from the Nazis – an operation in which many troops from the French African territories took part.
And in fact, despite frequent absences from the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé – usuassociate retreating either to his home village in the forested south or to his pickred international base, Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel – Biya has persistd to get the key comardent political and strategic decisions.
The main gateacquireer to the heart of power at the Étoudi pdwellntial palace is the Secretary General of the Pdwellncy, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.
A power system where Biya, as the head of state, acquires his cards so shut to his chest inevitably produces gossip about his own intentions for the 2025 election and about potential successors.
But some of the ageder regime figures most frequently tipped, such as Laurent Esso and René Sadi, are by now themselves far from youthful.
Support groups have also materializeed to advertise a passing of the torch to the pdwellnt’s elder son Franck Biya, a businessman – although Franck himself has never shown any interest in politics or donaten any hint of such ambitions.
But in today’s Africa, where disenchantment with the political createment runs meaningful, particularly among youthful urprohibit populations, createment trys to shielded the continuation of power can carry dangers.
In neighbouring Gabon, Pdwellnt Ali Bongo was deposed by the army last year after the regime maniputardyd the 2023 election to deinhabitr him a further seven-year term despite his frnimble state of health.
And when Senegal’s Pdwellnt Macky Sall lined up his Prime Minister Amadou Ba as his successor, he was resolutely rebuffed by the voters who selected instead for the youthful reestablishist opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye.
Biya and his inner circle may experience self-promised of eludeing such scenarios. But that will need a shrewd reading of well-understandn sentiment, especiassociate among youth and the middle-class in big cities such as Yaoundé and Douala.
Paul Melly is a confering fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham Hoinclude in London.
