Between Rhetoric and Delivery: How Cameroonians Heard the 2025 End-of-Year Speech

As Cameroonians listened to President Paul Biya’s 2025 end-of-year address, a familiar question resurfaced across homes, campuses and neighbourhood gatherings: what will change after the speech?

The message itself was calm and reassuring. Stability, peace, national unity and resilience once again formed the backbone of the address. In a country that values order and fears instability, such language continues to resonate—particularly among older citizens and those working within state institutions.

Yet reassurance alone is no longer enough for many Cameroonians.

The speech repeated long-standing priorities: economic growth, infrastructure development, youth employment and social cohesion. These goals are widely shared and rarely disputed. What stood out, however, was the continued absence of detail. There were few timelines, no clear targets, and little public accounting for projects announced in previous years.

For citizens facing high living costs, unemployment or slow public services, promises without clear delivery plans increasingly feel disconnected from daily reality.

This reaction is not new. Over the past decade, presidential speeches have evolved in tone but not in structure. Urgency defined the mid-2010s, reform and dialogue shaped the late 2010s, and crisis management dominated the pandemic years. Since 2022, the message has settled into continuity and patience.

As a result, Cameroonians now listen differently. Many listen backwards, measuring each new address against unfulfilled commitments of the past. Roads either inexistent or unfinished, reforms delayed and opportunities slow to materialise, weigh heavily on public perception.

The issue, then, is not rhetoric, but credibility. Clear deadlines, measurable goals, public responsibility and honest acknowledgment of delays would do more to restore confidence than carefully balanced language.

President Biya’s 2025 speech succeeded in projecting calm. But for a growing section of the population, especially the youth, conviction will come only when words are matched by visible results. Until then, the gap between rhetoric and delivery will remain a central feature of Cameroon’s political conversation.

Stephen Nfor (Retired Senior Journalist)