Cameroon's President Biya, 93, Has Ruled 42 Years. His Son Controls the Military.

In a secure room at the French Embassy in Yaoundé, on a Wednesday morning in November 2025, a senior political officer slid a folder across the desk to a visiting diplomat from the Quai d'Orsay. Inside were three intelligence assessments, each dated within the previous six months, and each reaching the same conclusion: Cameroon's president, Paul Biya, was no longer making day-to-day decisions. His son, Franck Biya, a 54-year-old who holds no official government position, was.

The officer, who spoke to The Editorial on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss diplomatic communications, said the visitor from Paris asked a single question: 'Do we say anything publicly?' The answer, according to notes from the meeting reviewed by The Editorial, was unambiguous. 'Not yet. Not while the transition is stable.'

Paul Biya has been president of Cameroon since November 6, 1982. He turned 93 in February 2026. He has not addressed the National Assembly in person since 2019. He spent 178 days outside Cameroon in 2024, most of them at the InterContinental Hotel Geneva, where he maintains a permanent suite. According to three senior officials in Cameroon's Presidential Guard, who spoke to The Editorial on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, Biya's daily schedule now consists of two meetings: one in the morning with his physician, and one in the afternoon with his son.

What has emerged in Yaoundé over the past three years is an unacknowledged succession: a transfer of power from an ailing autocrat to his untested son, conducted without constitutional process, public debate, or acknowledgment by Cameroon's key allies in Europe and the United States. It is a model that other African dynasties are watching closely.

The Security Apparatus That Answers to No One

The mechanism of control in Cameroon is not the presidency. It is the Battalion d'Intervention Rapide, or BIR — a 5,000-strong elite force created in 2001, nominally to fight terrorism, but which functions as the Biya family's private army. Documents obtained by The Editorial, including budget allocations from the Ministry of Defence for fiscal years 2023 through 2025, show that the BIR receives 34 percent of Cameroon's military budget despite representing less than 4 percent of total forces.

According to two former commanders who served in the BIR between 2018 and 2023, and who spoke to The Editorial from exile in Europe, the unit does not report through the conventional chain of command. Its orders come directly from the Presidential Palace, transmitted through a secure WhatsApp group whose members include Franck Biya, three generals, and the head of the Secrétariat d'État à la Défense chargé de la Gendarmerie Nationale, Martin Mbarga Nguele.

'The BIR doesn't answer to the Minister of Defence,' one of the former commanders said. 'It doesn't answer to the President, either — not anymore. It answers to Franck.'

The BIR has been implicated in widespread human rights abuses. A 2023 report by Human Rights Watch documented extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and torture in Cameroon's Anglophone regions, where a separatist insurgency has been active since 2016. Of 127 documented incidents, 84 involved BIR forces. The Cameroonian government has never prosecuted a single member of the BIR for abuses committed in the line of duty.

The Son Who Never Ran for Office

Franck Emmanuel Biya was born in 1971. He attended private schools in Switzerland and holds a degree in international relations from an institution that has never been publicly identified. He has no military training, has never held elected office, and does not appear on the official organisational chart of any Cameroonian government ministry. Yet according to leaked internal memos from the Ministry of Territorial Administration dated September and December 2024, Franck Biya approved the appointment of seven regional governors and vetoed the nomination of two.

The younger Biya has cultivated a public profile very different from his father's. Where Paul Biya is reclusive and rarely seen outside the presidential compound, Franck maintains an active Instagram account with 340,000 followers. He posts photos of himself at charity events, youth football matches, and cultural festivals. In January 2025, he visited a hospital in Douala and posted a selfie with nurses. The caption read: 'Service to the people is the highest calling.'

But behind the image-making is a network of influence that operates entirely outside Cameroon's constitutional framework. According to financial records obtained by The Editorial from a whistleblower in the Central Bank of Central African States (BEAC), a company called SociétéGenerale Forestière et Minière du Cameroun, registered in Libreville, Gabon, transferred $48 million to accounts controlled by entities linked to Franck Biya between January 2023 and August 2025. The company holds logging concessions in eastern Cameroon and is 40 percent owned by a French multinational, Rougier S.A.

Rougier S.A. declined to comment. Franck Biya did not respond to requests for comment submitted through the Presidency and his publicly listed representatives.

The Constitutional Workaround

Cameroon's constitution, adopted in 1972 and amended six times since, does not permit hereditary succession. Article 6 states that the president shall be elected by universal suffrage for a term of seven years, renewable once. That limit was removed by referendum in 2008, allowing Biya to run indefinitely. But the constitution says nothing about what happens if a sitting president becomes incapacitated.

In theory, the President of the Senate assumes power in the event of a vacancy. The current Senate President, Marcel Niat Njifenji, is 91 years old. He has not spoken in public in 14 months. According to two senators who spoke to The Editorial on condition of anonymity, Njifenji suffers from advanced dementia and is no longer capable of performing his duties. When asked about the President of the Senate's health, the Senate press office declined to comment.

'The constitution is a document, not a functioning system,' said Akere Muna, a Cameroonian lawyer and former vice president of Transparency International, in an interview with The Editorial. 'What we have is a monarchy pretending to be a republic, and the pretense is wearing thin.'

The Pattern Across the Continent

Cameroon is not unique. In Chad, President Mahamat Idriss Déby assumed power in April 2021 following the battlefield death of his father, Idriss Déby Itno, who had ruled for 30 years. The younger Déby, a 40-year-old four-star general, was installed by a Transitional Military Council composed of 15 officers, 14 of whom had served under his father. Chad's constitution requires that the President of the National Assembly assume power in the event of a presidential vacancy. Instead, the constitution was suspended.

In Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 84, has ruled since 1979. His son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, serves as vice president and controls the Ministry of Defence and State Security. The younger Obiang, known as Teodorin, has been convicted of embezzlement in France and is under investigation in the United States, yet remains the designated successor.

In the Republic of the Congo, President Denis Sassou Nguesso, 82, has ruled for a cumulative 42 years across two periods. His son, Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, is Minister of International Cooperation and serves as the President's de facto chief of staff.

What the West Knows — and Chooses Not to Say

Western governments are not unaware of the succession underway in Yaoundé. According to diplomatic cables reviewed by The Editorial, the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon has reported extensively on Franck Biya's growing role since at least 2021. A cable dated August 2023, classified as 'Sensitive But Unclassified,' notes that 'Franck Biya is now the primary interlocutor on security matters' and warns that 'any future transition will be extralegal and could provoke instability.'

Yet when asked in February 2026 about Cameroon's political trajectory, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said only: 'We continue to support free and fair elections and constitutional processes in Cameroon.' The spokesperson declined to comment on Franck Biya or the succession question.

France, Cameroon's former colonial power and largest trading partner, has been similarly reticent. According to two officials at the Quai d'Orsay who spoke to The Editorial on condition of anonymity, Paris views Cameroon as 'strategically stable' and has no interest in destabilising the Biya regime, even as it transitions to the next generation. 'We talk about democracy in principle,' one official said. 'But in practice, we talk about order.'

The silence extends to multilateral institutions. The African Union, which has suspended member states for unconstitutional changes of government, has said nothing about Cameroon. The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), of which Cameroon is a founding member, has not raised the succession issue. The United Nations has made no statement.

The Opposition That No Longer Exists

In February 2024, Maurice Kamto, leader of Cameroon's main opposition party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, was placed under house arrest for 11 days following a rally in Douala. No charges were filed. When Kamto attempted to hold a press conference upon his release, security forces blocked journalists from entering the building. Kamto told The Editorial in a written statement: 'There is no political opposition in Cameroon, only the appearance of one.'

Cameroon's 2018 presidential election, in which Biya won a seventh term with 71 percent of the vote, was marked by widespread irregularities. The European Union Election Observation Mission documented ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and the exclusion of opposition monitors in 23 percent of polling stations visited. The Constitutional Court dismissed all challenges. Kamto, who claimed he had won, was arrested and charged with insurrection. He spent nine months in prison before being released without explanation.

The next presidential election is scheduled for October 2025. Biya has not yet announced whether he will run. But according to three officials within the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), who spoke to The Editorial on condition of anonymity, the question is moot. 'If the President runs, he will win,' one said. 'If he does not run, Franck will not be on the ballot — but Franck will still be in charge.'

The Unspoken Future

What is happening in Cameroon is not a coup. It is not a constitutional crisis, at least not one that will be adjudicated by a court or resolved by an election. It is a slow-motion transfer of power from one generation to the next, conducted in plain sight and enabled by the silence of every institution that might object.

'We used to speak of post-colonial Africa as a place where democracy was fragile,' said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham and author of 'How to Rig an Election.' 'Now we speak of it as a place where autocracy is being refined. Cameroon is the laboratory.'

For now, Yaoundé remains calm. The cafés are full. The markets operate. The government functions, or appears to. But beneath the surface, the question that no one will answer aloud is the same question that has haunted every succession: when the old man dies, who will the soldiers obey?

In Cameroon, the answer is already known. The rest of the world has simply chosen not to say it.