As Cameroonians went to the polls this Sunday, the atmosphere was thick with a familiar sense of predetermined outcome. The presidential election, while presenting a ballot paper with twelve names, is widely anticipated to return 92-year-old Paul Biya for an eighth term, extending his 43-year tenure and reinforcing his position as the world’s oldest serving head of state.
This exercise in democracy appears less a contest and more a ritualistic reaffirmation of a political system meticulously engineered for self-preservation.
The demographic reality of Cameroon casts the situation into sharp relief. With half of its population under the age of 20, the nation is a youthful one, yet the vast majority of its citizens have never known another leader. Biya’s rule, which began in 1982, is an indelible feature of the Cameroonian landscape.
His previous electoral victories, each secured with a suspiciously commanding majority of over 70%, have done little to foster belief in the integrity of the process. As Cameroonian political scientist Stephane Akoa candidly noted, it would be “naive” to ignore that “the ruling system has ample means at its disposal to get results in its favour.” The architecture of power, from a pliant constitutional council to control over state resources, remains firmly in the incumbent’s grasp.
Nevertheless, this election has introduced a modicum of intrigue, primarily through the candidacy of Issa Tchiroma Bakary. A former minister who served Biya for two decades before his defection in June, Bakary represents a fissure within the established political class. His campaign, particularly in the strategic Far North region—a former Biya stronghold—has generated unexpected enthusiasm, drawing crowds that starkly outnumbered the sparse attendance at the president’s own rallies.
This suggests a simmering discontent even within traditional bastions of support. Bakary’s rise was undoubtedly facilitated by the exclusion of Biya’s main rival from the 2018 poll, Maurice Kamto, a move by the Constitutional Council that rights groups like Human Rights Watch decried as a critical blow to the election’s credibility.
The underlying drivers of this disaffection are palpable. Despite being central Africa’s most diversified economy, Cameroon is beleaguered by profound socio-economic challenges. Around 40% of the population lives below the poverty line, urban unemployment stands at a staggering 35%, and citizens grapple daily with the high cost of living, inadequate healthcare, and a dearth of quality education.
For the youth, these frustrations are acute, fostering a hunger for change. However, as Akoa observes, this discontent has yet to coalesce into the mass street protests witnessed in other African nations. For now, disillusionment is largely vented within the relative safety of social media platforms.
The government, keenly aware of this digital dissent, has moved to control the narrative, criticising independent online platforms that aim to compile their own results as attempts to “manipulate public opinion.” Furthermore, the ongoing conflict in the English-speaking regions, which has plagued the country since 2016, continues to cast a long shadow over the electoral process, with turnout expected to be severely depressed in these areas as it was in 2018.
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