ISTANBUL

Cameroonian President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state, turns 92 on Thursday.

Biya is the world's longest-serving national leader and Africa's second-longest-ruling president. He has been ruling over Cameroon for over four decades now.

He was born in 1933 in the majority-Christian southern part of then-French Cameroon. He studied at the Lycee Le Grand in the Sorbonne and Sciences Po Paris, graduating in 1961 with a degree in international relations.

Upon his return to Cameroon, he climbed through the government ranks, becoming a minister in 1968 and prime minister in 1975, following the unification of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon.

After Ahmadou Ahidjo's resignation in 1982, Biya became Cameroon's second president. He was the race's sole candidate, running on the People's Democratic Movement Party ticket. Later that year, he survived a military coup attempt.

Under mounting pressure in the early 1990s, he pledged to introduce multiparty politics in West Africa. He won the country's first multiparty elections in 1992 and repeated the success in 1997, 2004, 2011, and 2018.

President Biya has also declared his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election in October.

So far, 10 other Cameroonian political figures have declared their intention to run. The Central African country, with a population of around 30 million, had over 7.8 million registered voters in the last election, according to Elections Cameroon (ELECAM).