Since November 6, 1982, Paul Biya, a politician from Cameroon, has presided over the country. He is the oldest head of state in the world and the president of Africa with the second-longest tenure.
In what is now the South Region of Cameroon, Paul Biya was born in the village of Mvomeka'a. He attended the Lycée General Leclerc in Yaoundé and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, France, before continuing his education at the Institut des hautes études d'Outre-Mer, where he earned a degree in public law in 1961.
He wed Jeanne-Irène Biya in 1961; she was childless but adopted Franck Biya, who was the result of a previous relationship between Paul Biya and a different woman.
After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on 29 July 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya, who is 36 years younger, on 23 April 1994, and had two more children with her.
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.
His regime is supported by France, one of the former colonial powers in Cameroon, which supplies it with weapons and trains its military forces. France is also the leading foreign investor in Cameroon, ahead of the United States.