This week, there has been much discussion around Africa on the whereabouts and well-being of Paul Biya, the ninety-one-year-old president of Cameroon.
Perhaps surprisingly, he skipped the UN General Assembly in New York in September after attending the China-Africa conference in Beijing.
However, as he had not been seen in public for about a month, the rumors went into overdrive when he chose not to attend this week’s Francophonie summit in Viller Cotterêts, north of Paris.
The ambassador of Cameroon to France affirmed that Biya is “in good health” and in Geneva, where he usually stays when traveling.
According to other accounts, he needed to recuperate under medical supervision following a busy diplomatic itinerary in July and August.
After all, he is Africa’s oldest head of state and the second longest-serving, narrowly beaten to that record by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.
Such insignificant clues were insufficient to quell conjecture about Biya among political and media circles with an interest in Africa.
Ultimately, the official government spokesperson, René Sadi, refuted the rumors in writing and stated that the president will be returning home “in the next few days”.
And the head of the president’s private office, with him in Geneva, said he was “in excellent health”.
As the entry point to landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), Cameroon holds a crucial strategic position.
In addition to facing a difficult and frequently violent problem in its English-speaking districts, it also struggles to completely put an end to the carnage committed by jihadists near Lake Chad.
the stage, without any apparent personal need to engage in diplomatic presenteeism or performative summitry.
He is a habitual non-attendee at many gatherings of African leaders.
Cameroon’s President, Biya, has been a controversial figure in the country for years, with his measured speech and cautious tone. He has delegated the day-to-day running of the government and handling of technical dossiers to a succession of prime ministers, and his absences from public view have been nothing out of the ordinary. Critics argue that it is time for Cameroon’s national leadership to pass to a younger generation who could tackle national problems and explore opportunities for development and progress 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 failure to properly resource English language rights and public services. If Biya had responded more rapidly and with a more assertively generous and loudly touted reform package, he could have assuaged discontent early on and averted the eventual slide into violent confrontation between security forces and armed militants demanding outright secession.
Biya later brought forward reforms to meet the grievances of the English-speaking regions and decentralize power to regional councils. However, sometimes citizens have faced long waits before the regime addresses their concerns, as decentralized structures were not set up until many years after the original framework legislation had been passed. Some Cameroonians are comfortable with Biya’s restrained approach to leadership and his readiness to leave successive prime ministers to handle routine decisions.
The main gatekeeper to the heart of power at the Étoudi presidential palace is the Secretary General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh. A power system where Biya keeps his cards so close to his chest inevitably generates gossip about his intentions for the 2025 election and about potential successors. Some of the senior regime figures most frequently tipped, such as Laurent Esso and René Sadi, are by now far from youthful. Support groups have also appeared to promote a passing of the torch to the president’s elder son Franck Biya, a businessman, although Franck himself has never shown any interest in politics or given any hint of such ambitions.
In today’s Africa, where disenchantment with the political establishment runs deep, particularly among young urban populations, establishment attempts to secure the continuation of power can carry risks. Biya and his inner circle may feel confident of avoiding such scenarios, but that will require a shrewd reading of popular sentiment, especially among youth and the middle-class in big cities such as Yaoundé and Douala.
(BBC)
