Hypothesis over the wellbeing and whereabouts of Cameroon’s 91-year-old President Paul Biya has turn into a scorching subject throughout Africa this year.

Later attending the China-Africa top in Beijing in early September, it used to be possibly disagree amaze that he gave the UN Common Meeting in Brandnew York a omit.

But if he stayed clear of this year’s top of French-speaking nations (Los angeles Francophonie) at Viller Cotterêts, north of Paris, the hearsay mill lost in overdrive, as he had no longer been not hidden in society for roughly a day.

Cameroon’s ambassador in France insisted that Biya is “in good health” and in Geneva – his regular bottom when clear of house.

Alternative resources steered this used to be as a result of he had to left-overs beneath scientific supervision then a large diplomatic agenda in July and August.

Later all, he’s Africa’s oldest head of shape and the second one longest-serving, narrowly crushed to that document through President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of neighbouring Equatorial Guinea.

Such mundane indications weren’t enough quantity to nonetheless speculative guesswork about Biya in Africa-interested media and political circles.

So in spite of everything the federal government spokesman, René Sadi, issued a proper denial of the rumours, including that the president would go back house “in the next few days”.

And the top of the president’s non-public workplace, with him in Geneva, insisted he used to be “in excellent health”.

Cameroon occupies a key strategic location, because the gateway to landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Except suffering to completely hold back jihadist violence round Puddle Chad, it additionally wrestles with a posh and regularly violent disaster in its English-speaking areas.

In prominent the reaction to those demanding situations, Biya has introduced an peculiar private taste that regularly eschews the entrance of the degree, with none obvious private want to interact in diplomatic presenteeism or performative summitry.

He’s a regular non-attendee at many gatherings of African leaders.

Even again house, together with his leisurely accent and wary pitch, Biya has for a few years spaced his private interventions, in large part delegating the daily working of the federal government, and dealing with of technical dossiers, to a succession of high ministers.

Unexplained absences from society view had been not anything out of the habitual for this maximum enigmatic of presidents.

Rumours that he has died do floor from month to month, in large part as a result of those unannounced disappearances from the scene.

However this low-key taste belies the choice with which he contrived his arrival in energy in 1982, elbowing apart his patron and predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo, promising liberalising exchange prior to entrenching a stock at the presidency that disagree next challenger or marketing campaign of protest has controlled to shift.

As a stream of multi-party democratising exchange swept throughout a lot of Africa at first of the Nineteen Nineties, Biya used to be one in all a number of incumbent leaders to shrewdly adapt, permitting enough reform to whip the warmth out of lump protest date however firmly retaining keep an eye on.

Since one slender election victory again in 1992, he has shrugged off next political demanding situations, helped possibly through manipulation of the polls and no doubt through the sections amongst regularly tactically inept fighters.

Now, with Biya’s stream seven-year time period drawing to an result in November 2025, supporters have even been urgent the 91-year-old to arise once more.

Critics really feel that it’s lengthy pace month for Cameroon’s nationwide management to move to a more youthful past who may take on nationwide issues and discover alternatives for construction and go with extra pace and dynamism.

In 2016 academics and attorneys within the two basically English-speaking areas, South-West and North-West, protested over the failure to correctly useful resource English language rights and society products and services.

If Biya had replied extra all of a sudden and with a extra assertively beneficiant and loudly touted reform bundle, possibly he can have assuaged discontent early on – and thus prevented the eventual slide into violent disagreement between the protection forces and armed militants tough outright secession.

Biya did after carry ahead reforms – to fulfill the grievances of the English-speaking areas and, national, to decentralise energy to regional councils.

However from time to time electorate have confronted lengthy waits prior to the regime addresses their issues – decentralised buildings weren’t arrange till a few years then the latest framework regulation have been handed.

Some Cameroonians are, on the other hand, ok with Biya’s banned option to management and his readiness to reduce successive high ministers to deal with regimen selections.

They see his function as extra symbolic and free, related nearly to a constitutional monarch.

Without a doubt, this representational function is a range of the presidency with which he has gave the impression at pleasure.

On 15 August, for instance, he used to be at Boulouris, at the Côte d’Azur in France, the place he gave an in depth 12-minute deal with on the commemoration of the 1944 Allied landings to disencumber southern France from the Nazis – an operation through which many troops from the French African territories took phase.

And actually, in spite of popular absences from the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé – generally chickening out both to his house village within the forested south or to his most well-liked world bottom, Geneva’s Intercontinental Lodge – Biya has persisted to whip the important thing delicate political and strategic selections.

The principle gatekeeper to the guts of energy on the Étoudi presidential palace is the Secretary Common of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

An influence gadget the place Biya, as the top of shape, assists in keeping his playing cards so akin to his chest inevitably generates gossip about his personal intentions for the 2025 election and about doable successors.

However one of the senior regime figures maximum continuously tipped, reminiscent of Laurent Esso and René Sadi, are through now themselves some distance from younger.

Aid teams have additionally gave the impression to advertise a passing of the torch to the president’s elder son Franck Biya, a businessman – even if Franck himself hasn’t ever proven any pastime in politics or given any trace of such ambitions.

However in lately’s Africa, the place disenchantment with the political status quo runs deep, specifically amongst younger city populations, status quo makes an attempt to reserve the continuation of energy can lift dangers.

In neighbouring Gabon, President Ali Bongo used to be deposed through the military endmost yr then the regime manipulated the 2023 election to bring him an extra seven-year time period in spite of his fragile shape of condition.

And when Senegal’s President Macky Sall covered up his High Minister Amadou Ba as his successor, he used to be decisively rebuffed through the electorate who opted rather for the younger reformist opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

Biya and his internal circle might really feel assured of fending off such eventualities. However that can require a impish studying of widespread sentiment, particularly amongst adolescence and the middle-class in large towns reminiscent of Yaoundé and Douala.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham Space in London.