Paul Biya (Paul Barthélemy Biya'a bi Mvondo)

President Paul Biya has always been very reticent about regional politics though the size and geographical position of Cameroon imply that it should play a stronger role...

In Cameroon President Paul Biya will aim for an early presidential election encouraged by the opposition's poor showing in last year's parliamentary election but must also resolve a dispute with Nigeria over the Bakassi Peninsula...

Privately France and the EU pressed President Paul Biya to be more generous...

President Paul Biya is now likely to exploit June's electoral triumph by bringing the presidential poll forward a year to late 2003...

President Paul Biya has been in power since 1982 and the 1997 constitution allows him two more seven-year terms...

President Paul Biya fears a similar fate to Cameroon's first President Ahmadou Ahidjo who died in exile...

So there will be a welcome if few favours for the African leaders who claim to be Chirac's friends notably Presidents Omar Bongo (Gabon) Gnassingbé Eyadéma (Togo) Lansana Conté (Guinea) Paul Biya (Cameroon) and Denis Sassou-Nguesso once lauded by Chirac as the man to hold Congo-Brazzaville together (AC Vol 42 No 25)...

A Kenyan academic Michael Chege linked poverty to authoritarianism theft of state resources and commissions on contracts under regimes such as those of Cameroon's Paul Biya Gabon's Omar Bongo Kenya's Daniel arap Moi Togo's Gnassingbé Eyadéma and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe...

Yet travelling without his wife Bernadette he spent the long state banquet at the Etoudi Palace on 18 January flanked by the Cameroonian presidential couple and found conversation with President Paul Biya's wife Chantal Biya some forty years his junior something of a strain we hear...

Cameroon's extraordinary national football team the Indomitable Lions has done President Paul Biya some big favours...