FACTBOX - Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe

(Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe turns 85 on Saturday, still in office nearly a year after he lost a first round poll to Morgan Tsvangirai with whom he now shares power.

Here some details about Mugabe:

* MUGABE'S RECORD:

-- Once hailed as a model African democrat, Mugabe has clung to power for years despite a huge economic and health crisis.

-- Critics have accused Mugabe of destroying one of Africa's most promising economies with controversial policies, including his seizures of white-owned farms for redistribution to inexperienced blacks, and they see no hope for the country without a complete change in government.

-- Inflation reached 231 million percent a year last July, the latest month for which a figure has been announced. Earlier in February, the central bank lopped 12 zeros off the currency to try to tame the hyperinflation. The United Nations said in January that unemployment was 94 percent.

-- Cholera has also ravaged the country with over 3,700 deaths since August.

* ROAD TO SHARING POWER:

-- Mugabe's party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in the March 2008 elections but with too few votes to avoid a run-off.

-- Mugabe was sworn in on June 29 for another five-year term after the widely condemned run-off election from which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew because of attacks on his supporters.

-- Mugabe and Tsvangirai finally agreed to a power sharing deal last September, however it was only this month that the deadlock was broken over the makeup of the new government and Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister on February 11.

LIFE DETAILS:

* Mugabe was born in February 1924 on the Kutama Mission, northwest of Harare, and educated by Jesuits. He earned seven university degrees, three while in prison.

* Mugabe was jailed for 10 years in 1964 for opposing white minority rule. A guerrilla war began in 1972 against Ian Smith's white government of then-Rhodesia.

* Mugabe became leader of the ZANU liberation movement in the mid-1970s after his release from jail.

* The renamed ZANU-PF won independence elections in 1980 and Mugabe became prime minister. He took office as president in 1987 after a change in the constitution.