Hamadou Moustapha

Hamadou Moustapha was born on 11 May 1945 in Maroua, in the Diamare division of what is now the Far North Region of Cameroon. He attended primary school in Maroua from 1953 to 1958, then moved to Garoua in the North Region for his secondary education. He went on to university studies in Yaounde and passed the entrance examination for the National School of Administration and Magistracy (ENAM), where he specialised in civil administration.

Moustapha began his professional career on 23 April 1969 as a trainee civil administrator at the federal inspectorate of administration for North Cameroon in Garoua, becoming its acting secretary general in November 1969. From January 1970 to April 1972 he was first deputy prefect of Yagoua. On 5 April 1972, under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, he was appointed a special adviser (charge de mission) at the Presidency of the Republic.

He entered government as deputy minister of finance on 30 June 1975 and was promoted to minister of urban planning and housing on 8 November 1979. He was dismissed from the government on 18 June 1983.

With the return of multiparty politics in 1990 he became a founding member and national vice president of the opposition National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP). He was elected to the National Assembly for the Diamare constituency in the March 1992 parliamentary election. After Paul Biya won the October 1992 presidential election, Moustapha accepted appointment on 27 November 1992 as deputy prime minister in charge of urban planning and housing, a move made without the approval of UNDP president Maigari Bello Bouba. Some observers believed Biya intended real power in that government to lie with Moustapha and the other deputy prime minister, Andze Tsoungui.

After he and Issa Tchiroma accepted posts again in a July 1994 reshuffle, Bello Bouba said their membership of the UNDP was at an end. On 30 July 1994 Moustapha's car was attacked with stones at the Makabaye bridge during a visit to Maroua; the car left the road, one person was killed and others were injured. The UNDP denied responsibility. Moustapha and Tchiroma were expelled by the UNDP central committee in January 1995 and went on to form the National Alliance for Democracy and Progress (ANDP), legally recognised on 31 August 1995, with Moustapha as national president. He remained deputy prime minister until December 1997.

In 2002 he joined other northern politicians in alleging fraud in that year's parliamentary election and in a memo criticising neglect of the north. The ANDP nevertheless backed Biya in the 2004 presidential election, and on 8 December 2004 Moustapha was appointed minister in charge of special duties at the presidency, a post he held until his death. He was re-elected ANDP president at the party's second congress in July 2008. In July 2025, as the UNDP and Tchiroma's party ended their alliances with the ruling party, he confirmed that the ANDP would support Biya's candidacy.

Moustapha remained closely identified with Maroua and the northern regions of Cameroon throughout his career, and was regarded as one of President Biya's longest standing political allies in the north. Details of his family life were not widely reported.

Hamadou Moustapha died on Wednesday 11 November 2026 at his home in the Odza district of Yaounde, after a long illness. He was 81. His death, reported by Cameroon Concord News among others, came less than three months before the parliamentary and municipal elections scheduled for 7 February 2027, and at a time of shifting political alliances in Cameroon's three northern regions.

Moustapha's career linked the single party era of Ahmadou Ahidjo with the multiparty politics of the 1990s and the long presidency of Paul Biya. His decision in 1992 to enter government against his party's wishes, and the founding of the ANDP that followed, shaped the politics of northern Cameroon for three decades. At his death he had served nearly 22 consecutive years as a minister at the presidency, and he was remembered as a loyal ally of Biya at a time when other northern leaders had broken away.