The Africa Report | For decades, she has managed PR for several African presidents, including Senegal’s Macky Sall, Côte d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara and Cameroon’s Paul Biya.
After several weeks of silence and rumours about Cameroonian President Paul Biya’s health, the president’s private office announced on 8 October that he would be returning to Yaoundé “in the next few days”, after a stay in Switzerland.
While speculation about the president’s physical condition continues, his pending yet still undetermined return to Etoudi Palace could bring political life around the official residence more or less back to normal, if it does in fact materialise.
Meanwhile, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is due to visit Yaoundé with a delegation of business people, a trip that has already aroused considerable public curiosity. This is also due to the possible presence in the delegation of Patricia Balme, one of the Cameroonian president’s top public relations people.
“[Sarkozy] is a longtime friend, we met when he was 20 and I was 18. If he asked me to accompany him, I’d do it without hesitation,” says the former journalist.
But who is Patricia Balme, who has since switched to a career in political communication and economic lobbying, and who over the years has won the confidence of several African leaders?
Born on 16 April 1957 in Casablanca, Morocco, she got her degrees in political sociology and public law.
She then headed to the US, the El Dorado of publicists, aka spin doctors, where shadowy gurus are often found in the corridors of power. After studying political marketing, she returned to France in 1979 and began a career as a political and investigative journalist.
Etoudi Palace insider Africa Insights
Balme worked in television, at Antenne 2 and La Cinq, then in the editorial departments of Journal du Dimanche and Jours de France. In 1998, she set up PBCom International, a consultancy specialising in election campaigns, political lobbying and crisis communications.
From the outset, the firm leaned to the right of French political life: in 1999, Balme joined Michèle Alliot-Marie (MAM)’s campaign team. A member of all of France’s right-wing governments throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, MAM was then up against Jean-Paul Delevoye, the candidate backed by Jacques Chirac for the presidency of the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR).
“Everyone thought the election was a foregone conclusion… And yet we won,” she recalls. This success did not go unnoticed, even attracting the attention of President Chirac, who was surprised by the defeat of his favoured candidate.
Far from Paris, in Yaoundé, Biya was just emerging from the turbulence of years of conflict. Balme’s name came up in conversations with his entourage. After nearly two decades in power, Biya was looking to forge a new image before the next elections.
The woman who would also become the publicist for French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt signed a contract with the Cameroonian government in 1999, represented by Marafa Hamidou Yaya, then secretary general of the presidency and now imprisoned for embezzlement of public funds.
Biya was unsurprisingly re-elected in 2004. By then, Balme was an insider at the Etoudi Palace. Between August 2007 and October 2008, she made three official visits to the presidency. The Cameroonian president was re-elected again in 2011. No surprises there, either.
During the 2018 presidential election campaign, Biya renewed his confidence in Balme. It was she who acquired the domain name for Biya’s website and worked on an extensive online and offline communications strategy.
Biya broke new ground by announcing his candidacy on X. “In the campaigns he entrusted to me, we worked in perfect synergy with his teams,” says Balme, whose firm orchestrated the campaign’s political and digital strategy. Her team launched “L’Appel du peuple”, a manifesto signed by citizens across Cameroon in support of Biya’s candidacy.
Biya’s ‘strength of experience’
Balme is also one of the people behind “The strength of experience”, Biya’s campaign slogan for the 2018 presidential election, which skilfully played on the candidate’s age, a factor his opponents still consider his main handicap. Six years on, Balme looks back on the collaboration with fondness: “I have been lucky enough to serve President Paul Biya for 24 years. Over time, we’ve developed a relationship of mutual trust, nurtured by his taste for discretion”.
I’ve never been in the business of announcing a president’s candidacy on his behalf. If President Biya runs in 2025 and asks me to join him, I’ll fulfil that mission
“Many people talk about Paul Biya without ever having met him and without really knowing him […] Thanks to him, I learned what it means to be a statesman,” she says. “He’s a man of secrets, a secretive man, whose wisdom and culture, especially his literary culture, [have] impressed me”.
The publicist doesn’t forget to mention Chantal Biya, the influential First Lady, “an exceptional woman, committed to many humanitarian causes”, recalling how she accompanied Professors Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier to Yaoundé for the inauguration of the Centre International de Référence Chantal Biya, a research centre.
With the 2025 presidential election approaching, Balme’s influence can already be felt in Biya’s campaign. But for the moment, nothing is official. “I’ve never been in the business of announcing a president’s candidacy on his behalf. If President Biya runs in 2025 and he asks me to accompany him, I’ll fulfil that mission, especially as he embodies the stability of his country,” she says.
However, one thing is certain: she will not take part in Alassane Ouattara‘s re-election campaign, should he stand again in October 2025.
Balme and the Ivorian president worked together in the past, during the era when Ouattara was not in power. The adventure lasted 11 years until Balme had to make way for her French competitor Anne Méaux. The collaboration with Senegal’s Macky Sall also came to an end.
“Unfortunately, politicians sometimes forget those who were at their side when they were still just candidates,” she says with a sigh. She won’t say more. “The heads of state I work with have never asked me to sign a confidentiality clause,” she says. “That goes to show how much they trust me to keep their secrets.”
Politics: ‘The long game’ and the ‘power of words’
For years, Balme has prided herself in maintaining excellent relations with the staff of the Élysée Palace’s Africa desk, where the advisers to French presidents often act as deputy ministers for Africa. And while she has broadened her field of action to include Europe and the Middle East, Africa remains her universe of choice.
“It’s essential to respect the sovereignty of African countries,” she says. “Europe needs to understand that Africa is no longer its turf.”
At 67, Balme also says she wants to pass her experience on to young Africans fascinated by political communication. “I’ve always had this desire to transmit,” she says, adding that she appointed her son Sacha as managing director of her company.
Since then, Sacha Balme has founded his own political communications and events company, SB Com WW, based in the United Arab Emirates. “So the succession is assured,” she says, proud to be taking part “at [her] modest level, in writing the history of a country”.
In 2025, will she once again work with Paul Biya, who would then be in the running for his ninth term? “Politics is about the long game, and the power of words […]. A rare and well-thought-out speech is better than empty and inaudible declarations,” she says in response.
It’s a description that seems tailor-made for Cameroon’s president, who has made the rarity of his presence a sort of art, both in living and in governing. In Yaoundé, the 2025 presidential election is already on everyone’s minds, along with the expectation that Biya will run again, despite alarm bells over his age and presumed health problems.
After all, Biya is not yet a candidate – at least not officially.