Cameroon's politics: a constitution brought into force in instalments

Why Cameroon's constitution is still called a revision

Since the union of 1961 Cameroon has had two constitutions written as new documents. The federal constitution of 1961 joined East Cameroon and West Cameroon. The constitution of 1972, put to a referendum on 20 May that year, replaced the federation with a unitary state; the official results claimed a turnout of 98.2% and 99.99% of votes in favour.

Everything since has been an amendment of the 1972 text. The National Assembly adopted the largest set of changes in December 1995 and they were promulgated in January 1996. The consolidated version published by the Constitute Project is titled "Cameroon 1972 (rev. 2008)", and its first article still records the change of name made by Law No 84-1 of 4 February 1984, when the United Republic of Cameroon became the Republic of Cameroon.

The 1996 revision was long on design. It provided for a Senate of 100 members beside the National Assembly, for regions run by elected councils, for a Constitutional Council to take constitutional review away from the Supreme Court, and for a presidential term of seven years, renewable once. The consolidated text describes the Republic as "a decentralized unitary State", keeps English and French as official languages "having the same status" and orders every law published in the Official Gazette in both.

Bringing those institutions into being was left for later, in so many words. The transitional article, Article 67 in the consolidated text, says that the new institutions "shall be set up progressively" and lists what happens meanwhile. The National Assembly exercises full legislative power until the Senate exists. The Supreme Court performs the duties of the constitutional court until that court exists. The territorial organisation of the state stays as it was until the regions are set up. A further clause covers the order: if the Senate comes before the regions, senators are elected by municipal councillors alone.

The Senate did arrive before the regional councils, by seven years, and the BTI 2026 report describes senators as chosen by an electoral college of municipal councillors, the case that clause was written for. Britannica's verdict on the decentralisation is that the revision addressed it "albeit nominally". The Wikipedia article on Cameroonian politics describes the period before the Senate existed as one in which two constitutions applied side by side, the 1972 text naming the prime minister as successor and the 1996 revision naming a president of the Senate whom nobody could yet elect.

Who takes over when the presidency falls vacant

There have been four answers since 1961, and each records where power sat when it was written.

The federal constitution created a vice president and tied the post to the other half of the federation: if the federal president came from East Cameroon, the vice president had to come from West Cameroon, and the reverse. Ahmadou Ahidjo held the federal presidency and John Ngu Foncha was both vice president and prime minister of West Cameroon. After the election of 28 March 1970, in which Ahidjo was returned with 100% of the vote, the vice presidency passed to Solomon Tandeng Muna.

The unitary constitution of 1972 put the prime minister first in line. Paul Biya, a long-serving administrator in the Ahidjo government, was appointed prime minister on 30 June 1975. When Ahidjo resigned on 4 November 1982, Biya succeeded him under the constitution, and the Embassy of Cameroon in Washington dates his assumption of the presidency to 6 November. That handover is the only change of president Cameroon has had since independence, and it came by resignation and succession, with no ballot.

The succession clause settled the office and nothing else. Ahidjo kept the leadership of the single party, the Cameroon National Union, until Biya was elected to lead it in September 1983. Biya was elected president unopposed in January 1984, and on 6 April 1984 the Republican Guard, a force Ahidjo had recruited mainly from the north, seized the airport and the national radio station in Yaoundé before troops from outside the capital retook them within two days.

The 1996 revision moved the succession to the president of the Senate. In the consolidated text that official acts as interim president, an election must follow between 20 and 120 days after the vacancy, and the interim may not amend the constitution, call a referendum or stand for the presidency, and may change the government only after consulting the Constitutional Council. Both bodies the clause depends on were still to be created when it was promulgated in 1996: the Senate came in 2013, the Constitutional Council in 2018.

An amendment promulgated in April 2026 changed the order again. It created a vice president, first in line if the presidency is vacated before the end of a term and appointed by the president, and Britannica records that the post was not filled straight away. Set beside the federal office of 1961, the difference is in who chooses. The first vice presidency was fixed by the constitution to the smaller of two federated states; the second is filled by the president's own decision.

The BTI 2026 country report, published by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, says the question of succession "has loomed large in Cameroon for many years". It finds no mechanism inside the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement for choosing a successor, and describes the internal debate as mainly about which ethnic group comes out on top.

How much power the presidency holds by design

The constitution gives the president the definition of policy itself. Article 5 says the president "shall define the policy of the Nation", and Article 11 says the government "shall implement the policy of the Nation as defined by the President of the Republic". The president appoints the prime minister and, on the prime minister's proposal, the other ministers, sets their duties, ends their appointments and presides over the Council of Ministers.

Appointment runs well past the cabinet, to judges, generals, governors, prefects and the heads of state-controlled firms, and cabinet members are named regardless of their party's representation in parliament. Article 9 lets the president declare a state of emergency by decree, and a state of siege where the territory, the institutions or the existence of the nation is threatened. The BTI 2026 report adds that emergency rule can be renewed in three-month terms, and that a 2014 anti-terror law defined terrorism as any activity threatening the functioning of the state and allowed some cases to go before a military tribunal.

The government answers to the National Assembly, which can pass a vote of no confidence by an absolute majority of its members. In practice the prime minister coordinates and waits: the BTI report says the prime minister "must wait on the president's decision", and that at one point two years passed between meetings of the cabinet.

One amendment, promulgated in 2008, set the terms of the office as they stand, and it did two things. It removed the limit on presidential terms. President Paul Biya's announcement that he wanted it removed, in February 2008, coincided with a strike by transport workers over fuel prices, and several days of rioting in the major cities ended in a crackdown in which thousands were arrested and at least several dozen were killed. He had been due to leave office at the end of his term in 2011, and was re-elected that year. It also gave the president immunity for acts committed under four articles of the constitution, which "he shall not be accountable for" after leaving office.

Removal is possible in the text. The Court of Impeachment tries the president for high treason, but only after the National Assembly and the Senate indict through identical votes, by open ballot, each with a majority of four fifths of its members.

How the two chambers of Parliament are filled

The National Assembly has 180 members elected by direct suffrage for five years, and the constitution says each of them represents the whole nation. It meets in ordinary session three times a year. The Senate, under Article 20, "shall represent the regional and local authorities": each of the ten regions sends ten senators, seven elected by indirect suffrage and three appointed by the president, for five years, and a senator must be at least 40.

That arithmetic gives the president 30 of the 100 Senate seats before any vote is cast. The BTI 2026 report notes that the other 70 are chosen by an electoral college of municipal councillors, and that in the senatorial election of March 2023 the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement won all of the indirectly elected seats.

Opposition parties were legalised in December 1990 for the first time since 1966. In the presidential election of October 1992, the International Crisis Group records 39% for the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement, 37% for the Social Democratic Front, 19% for the National Union for Democracy and Progress and 3.6% for the Cameroon Democratic Union; the Social Democratic Front told Crisis Group in 2017 that it had been robbed of victory. In the legislative election of the same year the governing party won 45% of the votes and no majority. The three main opposition parties boycotted the presidential election of October 1997 over the refusal of an independent election commission.

Crisis Group cites 78% for the incumbent in the presidential election of 2011, and in the general elections of 2013 the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement took 148 of 180 deputies, 82 of 100 senators and 303 of 360 mayors. The Social Democratic Front and the Cameroon Renaissance Movement boycotted the legislative and municipal elections of 9 February 2020, and turnout in the Anglophone regions was very low. After the presidential election of 12 October 2025, the Constitutional Council declared the incumbent the winner on 27 October with 53.66% of the vote, an eighth term according to the World Bank.

The calendar itself is set from the top. The BTI report counts three postponements of legislative elections, in 2012, 2018 and 2024. In July 2024 the Assembly approved extending its own mandate, and the World Bank records the deputies' term running from 10 March 2025 to 30 March 2026 and the municipal councillors' from 25 February 2025 to 31 May 2026, with both elections planned for 2026. The president appoints every member of Elections Cameroon, the body that runs them.

Wikipedia counts 369 legalised parties as of December 2023. Women held 32% of Senate seats and 34% of National Assembly seats in the figures the BTI 2026 report gives, largely because of quotas.

Outside assessments are close to each other. Freedom House scored Cameroon 6 of 40 for political rights and 9 of 60 for civil liberties in its 2025 edition, with the status Not Free. In the 2024 Afrobarometer surveys cited by the BTI, 22% of Cameroonians described the country as not a democracy and a further 42% as a democracy with major problems.

What the regions and councils govern

Until 2008 Cameroon had ten provinces, each run by a governor the president appointed. The 1996 revision turned them into regions on paper, the change of name came in 2008, and the councils that were to run the regions were first elected in 2020.

The constitution grants regions and councils "administrative and financial autonomy" and says they are "freely administered by councils elected under conditions laid down by law". A regional council sits for five years, its members are to reflect "the various sociological components of the Region", and it is headed by "an indigene of the Region" elected from among them. The region's members of parliament sit on it in an advisory capacity. According to the BTI report, 22% of regional council seats are filled by state-recognised traditional chiefs.

Beside each elected council stands an appointed one. Article 58 places a presidential delegate in every region to exercise "the supervisory authority of the State", and the president may suspend or dissolve a regional council, or dismiss its president, after consulting the Constitutional Council. Under Article 61 the president may also redraw them or create new ones.

The ten regions divide into 58 divisions under presidentially appointed divisional officers, the préfets, and those into sub-divisions under sub-prefects. The BTI report counts 360 elected municipal councils. Wikipedia's account notes that local officials are employees of the Ministry of Territorial Administration, from which local governments draw most of their budgets. Traditional rulers, who also run courts with a large part in domestic, property and probate law, receive stipends from the national government.

Which court rules on constitutional questions

For twenty-two years the answer was the Supreme Court, standing in under the transitional article, and the Wikipedia summary notes that it could review the constitutionality of a law only at the president's request. The Constitutional Council was formed in 2018, and the BTI 2026 report describes it as taking constitutional law away from the Supreme Court and adjudicating disputes over presidential elections.

Article 51 fixes its composition at eleven members serving renewable six-year terms. The president appoints all eleven, but they are designated by four authorities: three, including the council's president, by the President of the Republic, three by the president of the National Assembly, three by the president of the Senate and two by the Higher Judicial Council. Former presidents of the Republic sit on it as members for life. Its rulings on the constitutionality of laws, on the regularity of elections and on their results cannot be appealed, and it must rule within fifteen days of a referral.

The Higher Judicial Council, which advises on the appointment and discipline of judges, is chaired by the president, who appoints most of its members. The BTI report concludes that the president "wields ultimate control over the careers of justices and magistrates".

Operation Sparrowhawk, an anti-corruption campaign, began in 2006, and a Special Criminal Court for the misappropriation of public funds followed in 2011. Among those convicted were the former interior minister Marafa Hamidou Yaya, sentenced in 2012 to 25 years, and the former prime minister Ephraim Inoni, sentenced the following year to 20. The BTI report notes that both were seen as potential challengers.

How the Anglophone demand reached the constitution

The 1996 revision was written while the former British Cameroons were asking for the federation back. In 1993 the first All Anglophone Conference in Buea called for constitutional amendments to restore the federation of 1961, and the second, in Bamenda in 1994, declared that Southern Cameroons would declare independence if that did not happen within a reasonable time. The Consultative Committee for Review of the Constitution rejected federalism in favour of decentralisation, and the two former vice presidents of the federation, Foncha and Muna, having both left the governing party in 1990, resigned from the consultative committee in 1994.

What the Anglophone side measured was precedence. A footnote in the International Crisis Group's report of 2017 sets it out: before 1972 the official next in rank to the president was Anglophone, and by 2017 the Anglophone prime minister came behind the president of the Senate, the president of the National Assembly and the president of a Constitutional Council that did not yet exist. The Social Democratic Front, a pro-federalism party with a strong Anglophone contingent, had been founded in Bamenda on 26 May 1990.

Protests that began in November 2016 turned the question into a war, and the history of the union covers the fighting. The constitutional response came afterwards. A Major National Dialogue was held over five days in 2019, without the separatist leaders, most of whom were in prison or feared arrest. The North-West and South-West regions were given a special status in 2019, with regional assemblies holding more powers than the councils elsewhere, and the regional councils were elected in 2020. The consolidated constitution already allowed for this in Article 62, which says the law "may take into consideration the specificities of certain Regions". The BTI 2026 report finds the assemblies "very weak" and the concessions as a whole unsupported by the major Anglophone groups.

Crisis Group found Anglophones in 2017 disagreeing over the number of states a federation should have: two, as before 1972, or four, six or ten, the last copying the regions. The two Anglophone regions hold about 25% of Cameroon's population, according to the BTI report.

Who Cameroon stands with abroad

Cameroon belongs to both the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the second since 1975. Its memberships also include the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation since 1974 and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa since 25 June 1999,.

Cameroon keeps a bilateral defence agreement with France, and the BTI report describes it as a dependable partner of the French for decades, including in their disagreements with the United States. Since 2003 it has also built what the same report calls a strategic partnership with the United States, which has operated a drone base in the Far North. Cameroon lost its preferential trade status with the United States in 2019, and since 2021 the United States has imposed visa restrictions on people associated with the Anglophone crisis. Cameroon is not a party to the International Criminal Court.

The border with Nigeria went to court. Cameroon referred the Bakassi peninsula to the International Court of Justice on 29 March 1994, the court ruled in Cameroon's favour in October 2002 on the strength of an Anglo-German agreement of 1913, and the Greentree Agreement of June 2006 set out the handover. The two states now cooperate against Boko Haram through the five-state Multinational Joint Task Force, and Nigeria extradited members of the self-proclaimed Ambazonian government in early 2018.