By Semafor Africa
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
With less than a week until Cameroon’s election, the world’s oldest head of state appears to have a strong chance of victory. Paul Biya, the 92-year-old president who has been in power since 1982, is seeking an eighth term in polls that will open at the weekend.
Opposition parties have failed to form a united front against Biya, who has rejected calls to stand aside amid speculation about his health. His own daughter said she will not vote for him in a viral TikTok message.
The cocoa and oil-producing country faces several challenges including a longstanding separatist insurgency by Anglophone separatists and attacks by jihadist groups.
“Few observers expect Cameroon to hold a free and fair election,” International Crisis Group wrote in a recent note, cataloguing constraints on political freedom and restrictions on civil society groups that previously acted as independent electoral observers. It said the election “will be a stress test for the country’s stability.”
Analysts point to Biya’s run for another term as a reminder that Africa’s leadership is increasingly elderly. Uganda’s president is 81 and Equatorial Guinea’s is 83.
Business Insider Africa said the continent — whose population is the world’s youngest — has a “gerontocratic pattern” of leadership.
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