Name: Paul Biya (Paul Barthélemy Biya’a bi Mvondo)
Date of Birth: 13 February 1933
Office: President of Cameroon since 1982
Party: Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement
Family: Jeanne-Irène Bika (Married in 1961, died in 1992), Chantal Vigouroux (Married in 1994)
About: Paul Biya is a Cameroonian politician who has served as the president of Cameroon since 6 November 1982. He is the second-longest-ruling president in Africa. A native of Cameroon’s south, Biya rose rapidly as a bureaucrat under President Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, serving as Secretary-General of the Presidency from 1968 to 1975 And then Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1975 to 1982. He succeeded Ahidjo as president upon the latter’s surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in a 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all of his major rivals.
Paul Biya was born in the village of Mvomeka’a in what is now the South Region of Cameroon. He attended the Lycée General Leclerc in Yaoundé and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, France, before continuing his studies at the Institut des hautes études d’Outre-Mer, where he earned a degree in public law in 1961.
