Paul Biya was born in the village of Mvomeka’a in the South Region of Cameroon. He studied at the Lycée General Leclerc, Yaoundé, and in France at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris, going on to the Institut des hautes études d’Outre-Mer, where he graduated in 1961 with a Higher Education Diploma in Public Law. He married Jeanne-Irène Biya, who did not have any children, though she adopted Franck Biya who was born from a relationship of Paul Biya with another woman. After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on 29 July 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya (37 years his junior) on 23 April 1994, and had two more children with her. Biya is a good friend of the former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos.

As an official in post-independence 1960s Cameroon, Biya rose to prominence under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. After becoming Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of National Education in January 1964 and Secretary-General of the Ministry of National Education in July 1965, he was named Director of the Civil Cabinet of the President in December 1967 and Secretary-General of the Presidency (while remaining Director of the Civil Cabinet) in January 1968. He gained the rank of Minister in August 1968 and the rank of Minister of State in June 1970, while remaining Secretary-General of the Presidency. Following the creation of a unitary state in 1972, he became Prime Minister of Cameroon on 30 June 1975. In June 1979, a law designated the Prime Minister as the President’s constitutional successor. Ahidjo unexpectedly announced his resignation on 4 November 1982, and Biya accordingly succeeded him as President of Cameroon on 6 November.

Because Biya is a Christian from the South Region of Cameroon, it was considered surprising that he was chosen by Ahidjo, a Muslim from the north, as his successor. His father who was a catechist wanted him to be in the clergy but at the age of 16 while in Catholic school, he was dismissed. After Biya became President, Ahidjo initially remained head of the ruling Cameroon National Union (CNU). Biya was brought into the CNU Central Committee and Political Bureau and was elected as the Vice-President of the CNU. On 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge of managing party affairs in Ahidjo’s absence. During the first months after Biya’s succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued to show support for Biya, but in 1983 a deep rift developed between the two. Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of abuse of power and paranoia about plots against him. The two could not be reconciled despite efforts by several foreign leaders. After Ahidjo resigned as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at an “extraordinary session” of the CNU party held on 14 September 1983.

In November 1983, Biya announced that the next presidential election would be held on 14 January 1984; it had been previously scheduled for 1985. He was the sole candidate in this election and won 99.98% of the vote. In February 1984, Ahidjo was put on trial in absentia for alleged involvement in a 1983 coup plot, along with two others; they were sentenced to death, although Biya commuted their sentences to life in prison, a gesture seen by many as a sign of weakness. Biya survived a military coup attempt on 6 April 1984, following his decision on the previous day to disband the Republican Guard and disperse its members across the military. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 71 (according to the government) to about 1,000. Northern Muslims were the primary participants in this coup attempt, which was seen by many as an attempt to restore that group’s supremacy; Biya, however, chose to emphasize national unity and did not focus blame on northern Muslims. Ahidjo was widely believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt, and Biya is thought to have learned of the plot in advance and to have disbanded the Republican Guard as a reaction, forcing the coup plotters to act earlier than they had planned, which may have been a crucial factor in the coup’s failure.

In 1985, the CNU was transformed into the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, in Bamenda the capital city of the Southern Cameroon and Biya was unlawfully elected as its president. He was also re-elected as President of Cameroon on 24 April 1988.

Biya initially took some steps to open up the regime, culminating in the decision to legalize opposition parties in 1990. According to official results, Biya won the first multiparty presidential election, held on 11 October 1992, with about 40% of the vote. There was no provision for a runoff; the opposition was unable to unite around a single candidate. The second placed candidate, John Fru Ndi of the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF), officially received about 36%. The results were strongly disputed by the opposition, which alleged fraud.

He has been consistently re-elected as the National President of the RDPC; he was re-elected at the party’s second extraordinary congress on 7 July 2001 and its third extraordinary congress on 21 July 2006.

After being re-elected in 2004, Biya was barred by a two-term limit in the 1996 Constitution from running for President again in 2011, but he sought to revise this to allow him to run again. In his 2008 New Year’s message, Biya expressed support for revising the Constitution, saying that it was undemocratic to limit the people’s choice. The proposed removal of term limits was among the grievances expressed during violent protests in late February 2008. Nevertheless, on 10 April 2008, the National Assembly voted to change the Constitution to remove term limits. Given the RDPC’s control of the National Assembly, the change was overwhelmingly approved, with 157 votes in favor and five opposed; the 15 deputies of the SDF chose to boycott the vote in protest. The change also provided for the President to enjoy immunity from prosecution for his actions as President after leaving office.

“Tyrants, the World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators”, by David Wallechinsky, ranked Biya with three others commonly in sub-Saharan Africa: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, and King Mswati of Swaziland. He describes Cameroon’s electoral process in these terms: “Every few years, Biya stages an election to justify his continuing reign, but these elections have no credibility. In fact, Biya is credited with a creative innovation in the world of phony elections. In 2004, annoyed by the criticisms of international vote-monitoring groups, he paid for his own set of international observers, six ex-U.S. congressmen, who certified his election as free and fair.” In a 2005 interview William Quantrill, a retired member of HM Diplomatic Service, argued that the reluctance of Biya to delegate responsibility seriously hampered the quality of governance, with trivial decisions often delayed until he got round to delivering them, and that there was too much government interference in the economy in general.

On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute.

In February 2008, riots broke out, calling for lower prices and the departure of Paul Biya. The demonstrators were severely repressed with reports of a hundred dead and thousands of arrests.

Biya regularly spends extended periods of time in Switzerland at the Hotel InterContinental Geneva where the former director Herbert Schott reportedly said he comes to work without being disturbed. These extended stays away from Cameroon – while sometimes as short as two weeks – are sometimes as long as three months and are almost always referred to as “short stays” in the state-owned press and other media. In February 2008, he passed a bill that allows for having an additional term in office as president which was followed by civil unrests throughout the country. The main violent riots took place in the Western, English-speaking part of the country starting with a “strike” initiated by taxi drivers in Douala, allegedly causing more than 200 casualties in the end. In 2009, his holiday in France allegedly cost $40,000 a day spent on 43 hotel rooms.

In 2009, Biya was ranked 19th in Parade Magazine’s Top 20 list of “The World’s Worst Dictators”.

In November 2010, Bertrand Teyou published a book titled La belle de la république bananière: Chantal Biya, de la rue au palais (English: “The beauty of the banana republic: Chantal Biya, from the streets to the palace”), tracing Chantal Biya’s rise from humble origins to become Paul Biya’s First Lady. He was subsequently given a two-year prison term on charges of “insult to character” and organizing an “illegal demonstration” for attempting to hold a public reading. Amnesty International and International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee both protested his arrest and issued appeals on his behalf; Amnesty International also named him a prisoner of conscience. He was freed on 2 May 2011 when the London chapter of International PEN agreed to pay his fine in order that he might seek treatment for his worsening health condition.

In the October 2011 presidential election, Biya secured a sixth term in office, polling 77.9% of votes cast. John Fru Ndi was his nearest rival, polling 10%. Biya’s opponents alleged wide-scale fraud in the election and procedural irregularities were noted by the French and US governments. In his victory speech, Biya promised to stimulate growth and create jobs with a programme of public works which would “transform our country into a vast construction site”. On 3 November 2011, he was sworn in for another term as President

In February 2014, French citizen Michel Thierry Atangana was released from a makeshift Yaoundé prison where, under Biya’s orders, he had been arbitrarily detained for 17 years under false claims of embezzlement because of supposed closeness to presidential candidate Titus Edzoa. Considered a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience by the United States Department of State, Amnesty International, Freedom House, and the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention since 2005, Michel was released under Biya’s personal decree but the Working Group’s tripartite demands remain unfulfilled.

In 2016, Cameroonians in the nation’s capital city of Yaoundé criticized Biya’s reaction to the country’s worst train crash in which 79 people died. Critics included government officials who remained anonymous, fearing a backlash.

The Anglophone protests in late 2016 were led by English-speaking lawyers in protest against the use of French in Cameroonian courts, which led to violent clashes with police. Opposition party leader Edna Njilin of the Cameroon People’s Party spoke out against the enforced use of French in the classroom. In January 2017, the government ordered a suspension of Internet services in the Northwest and Southwest provinces. Criticism of the suspension and increased opposition led to resumption of services in late April.

By June 2017, protests in Cameroon’s English-speaking provinces and cities led to police responding with force, with 4 protesters killed and over 100 arrested. International criticism has been levied at the United States for their lack of response to the growing Cameroonian crisis.

In April 2017, a Cameroonian journalist working for Radio France Internationale, Ahmed Abba, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment by a military tribunal for failing to report acts of terrorism. The judgement was severely criticized by human rights groups including Amnesty International.

In early 2017, videos and reports surfaced online showing a genocide was taking place in Southern Cameroon, sanctioned and led by Paul Biya. A petition to the United Nations gave details of police raping students at a university. Supporters are calling for the independence of Southern Cameroon before the violence escalates. The National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms embarked on a fact-finding mission in Buea to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in the region.

On 7 November 2018, another Cameroonian journalist, Mimi Mefo, was arrested after reporting on social media that the Cameroonian military was behind the murder of an American missionary in the country, Charles Trumann, in October of that year. Mefo was charged with “publishing and propagating information that infringes on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cameroon,” but was released and charges were dropped on 12 November after her arrest was condemned by both local and international media groups.