Paul Biya, Cameroon’s president, is 93 years old, leading a country where the median age is just 18, resulting in a 75-year age gap. Biya exemplifies a global trend where leaders are often significantly older than the populations they govern. According to data, three in four people worldwide live in countries led by individuals over 65, and two in three have leaders older than 70. Most leaders are past the typical retirement age.
The dataset compiled includes the ages of current leaders and their tenure across more than 140 countries, identifying the leader as the individual with the main executive power, such as a prime minister, president, or monarch.
In the G20, two leaders are over 80: Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Donald Trump, while seven are over 70. Only three leaders—Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman—are younger than 50. Vladimir Putin has been in power for 27 years, followed by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with 24 years.
In Africa, many leaders have ruled for decades. Biya has been in office since he was nearly 50, and several other leaders are in their 80s, having started their leadership in their mid-30s. The dataset shows that 31 of the 41 African countries included are autocracies, housing eight of the continent’s ten oldest leaders.
The median age of leaders globally is around 64 years, with Africa having the oldest leaders at nearly 70 years. In contrast, Asia and North America have median ages in the mid-60s, while European and South American leaders are younger, with median ages in the mid-50s. Africa and Asia also display a wider age span among leaders, with the oldest in their late 90s and the youngest in their 30s.
In South America, Lula da Silva stands out as an outlier, as most leaders in the region are younger than 60. Democracies often impose term limits, leading to changes in leadership, while autocratic leaders tend to remain in power for extended periods.
The analysis also compares the ages of leaders to their populations. Most countries have leaders older than the median age of their populations, with exceptions being the Netherlands’ Rob Jetten and Montenegro’s Milojko Spajić, who are slightly younger than their respective median ages. Many African countries exhibit significant age gaps between leaders and their populations, with median ages as low as 16 in Niger, Chad, and the DRC.
In Europe, age gaps are generally smaller, with leaders often younger and populations older. The age of leaders is difficult to verify precisely, and discrepancies may exist.
Pew Research conducted a similar analysis earlier this year, focusing solely on leader ages, with results that largely align with this dataset. However, differences may arise based on how leaders are defined, such as whether to consider King Salman or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the leader of Saudi Arabia.
The dataset also acknowledges complexities in governance, particularly in regions where leaders do not control all territory, such as Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Ukraine. The classifications used in the analysis are derived from V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy), which, while respected, is not without critics. Other classification systems may yield slightly different results, but the overall trends are likely to remain consistent.