An ethnic Runga, he was born in 1970 in N'Délé. His father was an imam who served as the leader of the Muslim community in Miskine neighborhood of Bangui.[2] His mother was a Chadian.[3] After completing secondary school, Adam was trained in Sudan and then in Egypt, where he graduated from the police academy in Cairo in the 1990s[2] after spending 10 years in Egypt.[3] After that, he was trained by the Israeli Special Forces for six months[3] and then settled for a year in Bangui where he was assigned to the Central Office for the Suppression of Banditism (OCRB).[3] During the early 2000s, he was hired as a guardsman in various Persian Gulf countries.[2][3] From 2003 to 2009, he stayed in the UAE and was a bodyguard of President Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.[4] In 2009, he returned to Central African Republic and joined the CPJP rebel group. Following the disappearance of Charles Massi in 2010, he became the leader of CPJP.[2]