Cameroon's 93-Year-Old President Paul Biya Sparks Concerns After Two-Month Absence in Europe

When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student. Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.

“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police. For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away.

He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years. Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.

A president who is rarely seen

Biya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced. He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency, but his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.

Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.

Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago. For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known. Bime’s children are among them, with his oldest at 32 and youngest at 18. Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.

“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.

After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown. “Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop questions about how the country is being governed.”

Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. However, such a move is unlikely to succeed due to the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement. Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month, while officials like government spokesman Sadi assure citizens that the president is alive and will soon return.

From hope to frustration

Bime is old enough to remember when Biya represented change, first hearing his name in the 1970s when Biya served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. When Biya took over in 1982 and appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a symbol of hope.

For critics, the disappointment is not just about the duration of Biya's rule, but what they view as a failure to improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, pointed to bad roads, frequent power cuts, corruption, and a lack of jobs for young people. Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, added that while institutions can keep the government running, the bigger question is whether long-standing problems like the Anglophone crisis and economic frustrations are being resolved.

Healthcare is another major concern. Ikome noted that ordinary Cameroonians face poverty preventing access to proper medical care, while leaders can easily travel overseas. For Bime, the situation is intensely personal as he wonders if he will live to see another president while the nation's elite continue to seek care abroad.