History of the Country in Guinea-Bissau

Published on April 26, 2026 and written by Cyril Jarnias

The country’s history in Guinea-Bissau is that of a small West African territory long considered a periphery, but which played a central role in the Atlantic slave trade, in the African liberation struggles, and even in the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship. From pre-colonial kingdoms to the Kaabu empire, from the slave trade to the “pacification” campaigns, from the PAIGC guerrilla to repeated coups d’état, Guinea-Bissau’s past is dense, conflict-ridden, and deeply shapes its current political life.

From Early Settlements to Great Pre-Colonial Kingdoms

Long before the arrival of Europeans, the territory of Guinea-Bissau had been inhabited for millennia. Around 1000 AD, there were still groups of hunter-gatherers, gradually joined by farmers using iron tools. Several peoples then settled in this mosaic of mangroves, forests, and savannas: Jola, Papel, Manjak, Balanta, Biafada, soon joined by the Mandinka (or Mande) and the Fulani (or Fula).

Good to Know:

The societies in the region exhibit two distinct political models. The Balanta and Jola operate with a decentralized system, where power rests with families and villages, without kingship. In contrast, the Mandinka, Fula, Papel, Manjak, and Biafada are organized into chiefdoms subject to kings, forming a hierarchical society where nobles hold political, military, and judicial powers. In these societies, social status is visible through clothing, jewelry, housing, and means of transportation.

As early as the 7th century, a Bainuk kingdom stretched between the Gambia River and the Cacheu River. But it is especially from the 13th century onward that the region became integrated into a major imperial power: the Mali Empire.

The Province of Kaabu in the Mali Empire

In the 13th century, the region corresponding to present-day Guinea-Bissau became a province of the Mali Empire, following the conquest of Senegambia led by General Tiramakhan Traoré, in the service of Sundiata Keïta. Orally, it is said that Tiramakhan pursued a Wolof king who had insulted the emperor, crossing the Gambia River and moving down into Casamance. From there, Kaabu was structured as a border province, ruled by a farim kaabu, a commander acting in the name of Mali.

Attention:

By the 14th century, the administration of the Mali Empire extended over much of present-day Guinea-Bissau. Its trade networks grew denser towards the north, heading to North Africa, facilitating the exchange of salt, metals, cloth, and slaves.

But as the Mali Empire declined from the 14th century onward, ties with the distant provinces loosened. At the beginning of the 16th century, the advances of Koli Tenguella in the region definitively severed connections between Mali and the territories corresponding to future Guinea-Bissau. Kaabu then transformed from a province into an independent empire.

Kaabu, Mandinka Empire and Slave-Trading Power

From the late Middle Ages to the 19th century, Kaabu became one of the most powerful Mandinka states on the West Atlantic coast. It functioned as a federation of kingdoms, headed by a warrior nobility, the Nyancho (or Ñaanco), who claimed patrilineal descent from Tiramakhan Traoré. The supreme sovereign, the Mansaba, resided at Kansala, in the Gabú region to the east.

Example:

Kaabu was an essentially military state, specialized in warfare and control of trade routes. Though distinct, it preserved the heritage of the Mali Empire by adopting Mandinka as a lingua franca and retaining its political structures and narratives. Its expansion was achieved through a mix of military domination, strategic alliances, and interethnic marriages, allowing the absorption of other peoples.

The economy relied heavily on the slave trade. The warrior classes grew wealthy through imported goods: cloth, beads, metal objects, firearms. From the 15th century onward, the coast became increasingly connected to European powers, previously secondary compared to the North African caravan routes dominant in the 14th century.

Kaabu’s Central Role in the Slave Trade

The region became one of the major reservoirs of the Atlantic slave trade. It is estimated that in the 17th and 18th centuries, approximately 700 people were deported each year from the area that today corresponds to Guinea-Bissau, a large portion coming from Kaabu’s wars of expansion. Some sources indicate that up to half of the captives sold during this period came from military campaigns led by its warrior elites.

Wars, once motivated by political or economic control, gradually turned into manhunts aimed at feeding European demand for slaves. In parallel, populations like the Balanta or some Jola refused to enter this system, resisting both slave raids and early European contacts.

Historical analysis of war motivations and resistance in West Africa

Religious Shocks and Fall of Empires: Kaabu, Fuladu, and the Fulani

From the 18th century onward, Kaabu faced a new adversary: the Fulani imamate of Fouta-Djalon, to the east. The Fulani, semi-nomadic pastoralists who had arrived in the region as early as the 12th century and became more numerous in the 15th, led jihads and challenged Mandinka domination, combining religious, social, and economic grievances.

75

Percentage of Fulani troops killed by the explosion of powder reserves during the Battle of Kansala in 1867.

Some smaller Mandinka kingdoms survived for a while longer, before being absorbed by Portuguese colonization. Thus, well before the creation of “Portuguese Guinea,” the space of Guinea-Bissau was already the stage for cycles of domination, resistance, and internal political reconfigurations.

The Coastal Worlds: Kingdoms, Ports, and Island Societies

While Kaabu dominated the interior, the coast and islands developed their own political dynamics. The Biafada organized around three kingdoms: Biguba, Guinala, and Bissege, located in the Rio Grande de Buba region. Biguba and Guinala became major ports, hosting communities of lançados – those Afro-European traders, often from Cape Verde or banished from Portugal, who lived in contact with local populations.

Tip:

The Biafada kingdoms, though vassals of the mansa of Kaabu, derived significant power from their position as commercial crossroads. According to oral tradition, the kingdom of Bissau was founded by the son of the king of Quinara (Guinala), accompanied by his pregnant sister, his six wives, and part of his father’s subjects. Initial cordial relations with the Portuguese later deteriorated. The kingdom successfully withstood Portuguese “pacification” campaigns in 1891, 1894, and 1904. It was only in 1915, through the action of João Teixeira Pinto and warlord Abdul Injai, that Bissau was finally absorbed by Portuguese colonization.

The Bijagós Islands: Enduring Defiance Against Outside Power

Offshore, the Bijagós (or Bissagos) Islands, an archipelago of about 88 islands and islets, constituted another center of power. A warlike society turned toward the sea, the Bijagós conducted nighttime raids against coastal villages and other islands. Men dedicated themselves to building dugout canoes and warfare, women to agriculture, house construction, and the domestic economy. In their worldview, “at sea, they have no king,” illustrating a claimed independence from mainland powers.

The Bijagós and the Atlantic Slave Trade

The complex role of the Bijagós archipelago in the slave trade, marked by active participation but also fierce resistance to colonial powers.

Slave Suppliers

They supplied a large number of slaves to European traders, while being relatively spared from mass deportation thanks to their insular location.

Children vs Adults

Portuguese accounts report that Bijagós children were considered ‘good slaves,’ while adults revolted, committed suicide, or escaped in the New World.

Resistance and Power

Their capacity for resistance and the power of their ‘navy’ translated into a direct confrontation: in 1535, a Portuguese expedition sent to conquer the islands was annihilated.

Break and Restoration

The Bijagós then long refused all trade with the Portuguese and treated shipwrecked sailors harshly, before a slow restoration of relations.

The archipelago would only be declared “conquered” by Portugal in 1936 and officially annexed in 1937. In the meantime, from 1917 to 1925, a large-scale tax revolt engulfed the islands, forcing the Portuguese administration to resort to a policy of repression and segregation between Europeans and natives. In fact, the Bijagós were among the last to be truly colonized.

The Arrival of Europeans and Integration into the Atlantic World

The first Europeans to document the region were 15th-century navigators: the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto in 1455, the Portuguese Diogo Gomes in 1456, then Duarte Pacheco Pereira and the Fleming Eustache de la Fosse in the 1470s-1480s. The Portuguese explorer Nuño Tristão, who came seeking slaves in the early 1440s, was killed by locals in 1446 or 1447.

Portugal, in search of gold, new routes, and labor, rounded Cape Bojador in the 1430s and reached Sierra Leone before 1460. The colonization of the Cape Verde Islands began around 1456, making the archipelago a major base for trade with what the Portuguese called “Guinea of Cape Verde,” a vast area stretching from Cape Verde to the limits of present-day Sierra Leone.

In this configuration, the ports of Cacheu, Bissau, and Guinala, as well as riverine trading posts like Toubaboudougou, became indispensable relays for the trade of gums, ivory, hides, musk, dyes – and above all human beings.

The Slave Trade at the Heart of the Regional Economy

Very early on, the region became integrated on a large scale into the transatlantic slave trade. Before 1500, it is estimated that approximately 150,000 Africans were deported by the Portuguese from Upper Guinea. Many were sent to Cape Verde to work on cotton and indigo plantations or to manufacture the famous panos, cloths woven on narrow looms that became a regional currency. Others were shipped to Portugal, or later to the Atlantic islands and the Americas.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, several thousand people were captured and sold each year from the region’s ports. Sources mention about 3,000 people per year leaving the port of Guinala during the period 1580-1640, often destined for Spanish overseas possessions. A significant portion of these captives came from Kaabu’s wars or conflicts related to the Fulani jihads.

Good to Know:

The enslavement of individuals resulted from several factors: penal sentences, sales to survive famines, kidnappings by local or European raiders, and captures during combat. African elites (kings, chiefs, warriors) played a central role by exchanging captives for goods such as guns, cloth, alcohol, or beads. Some dignitaries of the time were already aware of the moral violence of this trade.

The structure of the traffic was complex. African mercenaries and sailors, the grumetes, led chained captives to the barracoons of Cacheu, Bissau, or Bolama. Intermediaries, the tangomãos, negotiated prices, while the lançados – these mixed-race or marginalized Portuguese – purchased slaves to resell them to European captains. Powerful Afro-Portuguese women, the senhoras, sometimes controlled large portions of this trade.

The table below summarizes some structuring characteristics of the slave trade in the region:

This slave economy had devastating consequences: depopulation, permanent insecurity, raiding wars, destruction of entire communities. It also fueled lasting distrust between neighboring groups, while strengthening the powers that controlled trade routes.

A Portuguese Domination Long Coastal and Contested

Despite its early claims over “Guinea of Cape Verde” in the 15th century, Portugal controlled, for centuries, only a few fortified coastal points. The hinterland remained the domain of African kingdoms. Colonial authorities tried to prohibit “unauthorized” trade and spontaneous settlement on the mainland, but the lançados and other European adventurers largely ignored these restrictions.

Attention:

The Iberian dynastic union (1580) exposed Portuguese possessions to attacks from France, Holland, and England. Despite the fortification of Cacheu (1590), the colony depended on local populations (Manjak) for its water supply and suffered famines that decimated its troops, leading to the temporary abandonment of several posts such as Buguendo, Guinala, and Bissau.

Until the end of the 19th century, Portuguese control outside the forts remained largely fictitious. “Guinea of Cape Verde” served mainly as a slave supply zone, later for peanut oil in the 20th century, and as a commercial outlet for a few colonial houses.

Colonial Borders and Bloody “Pacification”

The turning point came with the “Scramble for Africa” in the 19th century. After the Berlin Conference, the principle of “effective occupation” forced European powers to demonstrate actual control over claimed territories. Negotiations set colonial boundaries: Bolama was awarded to Portugal in 1870 by arbitration of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, while Casamance went to France in 1886. In 1879, the administration of Guinea was formally separated from that of Cape Verde, creating a distinct colony, often called “Portuguese Guinea.”

Example:

To impose its authority and respond to international pressures, Portugal launched military campaigns called ‘pacification’ in Guinea between 1912 and 1915. Commanded by João Teixeira Pinto and supported by an African force under the orders of Abdul Injai, these operations were extremely violent. They consisted of village destruction, livestock confiscation, and population deportations. This show of force had as its main objectives to impose the payment of the hut tax and to break local resistance, notably that of the kingdom of Bissau and other chiefdoms.

Several additional campaigns were necessary, notably in 1917, 1925, and then in 1936 to subdue the Bijagós Islands. It was only at the end of the 1930s that one could consider almost the entire territory under colonial domination, even if pockets of dissent persisted.

A table summarizes this progression:

Portuguese Guinea: A Peripheral and Underdeveloped Colony

While Lisbon invested mainly in Angola and Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea long remained a colonial “backwater”: few settlers, limited infrastructure, skeletal administration. The economy was oriented toward exporting agricultural products (peanuts, oil, palm kernels, timber) through companies like Companhia União Fabril. In the 1950s, the population was estimated at around half a million inhabitants.

0.3

Percentage of Bissau-Guineans who had attained the status of “assimilado” around 1970, despite the “overseas provinces” reform.

Education was almost nonexistent, even within the Portuguese framework itself, which blocked the emergence of trained local elites. Salazar’s regime saw Guinea as a low-profit colony, meant to provide peanut oil and some raw materials.

Yet it was precisely in this apparently marginal periphery that one of the most remarkable liberation struggles on the African continent was born.

The Birth of the PAIGC and the Shift to Armed Struggle

On September 19, 1956, a small group of intellectuals and anti-colonial activists founded in Bissau the African Party for Independence (PAI), which became in 1960 the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Among its founders were Amílcar Cabral, an agronomist of Cape Verdean origin, Rafael Barbosa, Aristides Pereira, Luís Cabral, and a few others. From the outset, the party aimed for the dual independence of Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde, with the ambition of uniting them politically.

Initially, the strategy was legalistic and urban: union work, constitutional agitation, information campaigns. The PAIGC sought to rely on the small proletariat of the port of Bissau and other administrative centers.

Attention:

In August 1959, the bloody repression of a dockworkers’ strike in Bissau by Portuguese colonial forces (about fifty dead, hundreds wounded) marked a decisive turning point. The PAIGC, led by Amílcar Cabral, concluded that no peaceful evolution was possible under Salazar’s regime, thus radicalizing the struggle for Guinea-Bissau’s independence.

The party went into clandestinity. Cabral organized the withdrawal of the political apparatus to Conakry, capital of independent Guinea under Sékou Touré, who agreed to offer a sanctuary. Between 1960 and 1963, the PAIGC transformed into a guerrilla movement: training of cadres, gradual implantation in rural areas, seeking international support.

The Liberation War: “Portugal’s Vietnam”

On January 23, 1963, a PAIGC attack on the Portuguese garrison at Tite, in the south, is generally considered the official start of the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence. The conflict would last more than eleven years, until 1974, and would become one of the most effective guerrilla movements in Africa.

At the beginning, the Portuguese military presence was modest: only two infantry companies, concentrated in the major towns. The PAIGC launched a sabotage campaign: bridges destroyed, telegraph lines cut, roads mined, arms caches scattered. In 1964, it opened a second front in the north, while the Cassaca Congress restructured the military wing into the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARP) and reaffirmed the primacy of the political over the military.

The Construction of “Liberated Zones”

The PAIGC’s strategy rested on a highly mobile guerrilla, embedded in the rural population. Rather than directly attacking major towns, the movement sought to gradually control the bush, isolate Portuguese positions, and build, in the regions under its control, a parallel administration. “Liberated zones” emerged, with their bush schools, health posts, “people’s stores,” and popular judicial structures.

Testimonies from international observers, including a special UN mission, confirm that in these zones, the population had access to services that did not exist under colonial authority. Cabral insisted that these territories already had political, administrative, judicial, military, social, and cultural institutions, in other words, the framework of a state moving toward independence.

Special UN mission and international observers

The FARP trained fighters capable of working the land alongside villagers, supervising agricultural projects, and teaching improved farming techniques. The PAIGC army was not just a military force: it was an instrument of economic and social transformation.

International Support and Portuguese Counterinsurgency

The conflict was not only fought on Bissau-Guinean soil. The PAIGC was part of the camp of anti-imperialist struggles of the Third World, forging ties with the MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and other movements, within the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP), founded in 1961. The movement received substantial aid from Cuba (doctors, technicians, artillerymen), the Soviet Union (modern weapons, notably SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, then pilot training), and China (equipment, training). Sweden provided significant civilian and humanitarian cooperation.

147

The PAIGC claimed 147 attacks in 1965, marking the extension of the guerrilla to the east and north of Portuguese Guinea.

In 1968, Lisbon appointed General António de Spínola governor of Portuguese Guinea. He understood that the war could not be won by force alone. He launched a “hearts and minds” policy: building schools and hospitals, promises of reforms, massive recruitment of Guineans into the colonial army. The “Africanization” of Portuguese forces aimed to create a local army loyal to Portugal and to stir up ethnic divisions, notably by heavily enlisting Fulani, sometimes seen as rivals to certain social bases of the PAIGC.

Despite this adaptation, the military balance remained unfavorable to Portugal. By 1972, almost all rural territory was controlled by the guerrilla. Portuguese forces, estimated at over 30,000 men in 1974, remained confined to a few towns, bases, and strategic axes.

Amílcar Cabral, Theoretician and Strategist

At the heart of this process was the figure of Amílcar Cabral. Born in Bafatá in 1924, trained as an agronomist in Portugal, he used his studies and field surveys in Portuguese Guinea to finely analyze social structures, agrarian conditions, and class relations. Influenced by Marxism, but hostile to mechanical schemas, he advocated a “concrete approach to concrete problems” and refused to import ready-made models.

Good to Know:

Colonialism seeks to break the culture of dominated peoples to facilitate their governance. Resistance implies a ‘re-Africanization,’ that is, a reconnection of urban and educated elites with popular culture, local languages, and peasant traditions. The liberation struggle is an indivisible whole, where armed action, political struggle, and cultural resistance are interdependent.

On the level of political sociology, Cabral analyzed the contradictions of the colonial petty bourgeoisie and assigned it a difficult task: “to commit suicide as a class,” that is, to renounce its corporate interests to fully identify with the revolutionary project of the peasant masses.

Good to Know:

Amílcar Cabral situated the liberation struggle within an internationalist framework, establishing links between Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He advocated solidarity with workers in imperialist metropolises, including the Portuguese, distinguishing them from the colonial machine. He notably praised the refusal of some Portuguese officers to participate in the colonial wars.

Cabral was assassinated in Conakry in January 1973, in a plot involving Bissau-Guinean dissidents and, presumably, Portuguese services. His death did not stop the momentum of the PAIGC, but deprived the movement of its main thinker.

Independence Proclaimed at Madina do Boé

In 1972, confident in its control of the terrain, the PAIGC organized elections in the liberated zones. A legislative body of 120 delegates was chosen by the population. These representatives met at Madina do Boé in September 1973 and unilaterally proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. Luís Cabral, Amílcar’s half-brother, was designated president, heading a fifteen-member Council of State.

57

Number of states recognizing Guinea-Bissau by the end of 1973.

General Spínola, then governor of Portuguese Guinea, tried to deny the reality of these “liberated zones,” but the costly prolongation of the war helped undermine the dictatorship in Lisbon.

From Madina do Boé to the Carnation Revolution

On April 25, 1974, Portuguese officers grouped in the Armed Forces Movement overthrew the Salazarist regime (which had become Caetanist). Among them were many veterans of the colonial wars, convinced of the military and moral dead end of these conflicts. Spínola briefly became president of the junta of national salvation that took power.

Secret contacts between Lisbon and the PAIGC had already taken place before the coup. After the Carnation Revolution, negotiations accelerated, with meetings in London and then Algiers. An agreement, signed in late August 1974, confirmed Portugal’s recognition of Guinea-Bissau’s independence, the commitment to withdraw troops, and the effective transfer of powers. On September 10, 1974, independence was officially recognized by the former colonial power, ending more than five centuries of intermittent colonial presence.

Symbolically, the PAIGC became the first liberation movement in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence through armed struggle. But the legacy of colonization, the fractures created by war, and the political choices after 1974 would plunge Guinea-Bissau into another story, one of hopes, ruptures, and instability.

The Postcolonial State: Between Revolutionary Project and Internal Fractures

At independence, the PAIGC set up a one-party state, Marxist-inspired, led by Luís Cabral. The proclaimed goal was to achieve a “second liberation” – economic, social, cultural – by deconstructing the structures inherited from colonialism. Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde were supposed to move towards political unity, in line with Cabral’s original project.

Good to Know:

From the early years of independence, the country was marked by deep tensions related to the aftermath of the war. The ruling movement systematically eliminated former Guinean soldiers who had served in the Portuguese army. Executions and mass graves have been acknowledged, notably in the PAIGC press in the early 1980s, citing locations such as Bissorã, Cumerá, Portogole, or Mansabá. This legacy continues to weigh on the legitimacy of those in power.

In practice, many Bissau-Guineans perceived the state apparatus as dominated by Cape Verdean or mixed-race cadres, accentuating resentments. The model of a planned economy quickly ran up against local realities and the weakness of administrative capacities. Guinea-Bissau remained one of the poorest countries in the world, dependent on foreign aid, notably from Portugal.

In November 1980, a coup d’état led by João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira, then Prime Minister and former military chief, overthrew Luís Cabral. The union between Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde was broken: the Cape Verdean wing of the PAIGC founded a separate party, the PAICV, and followed its own path. In Bissau, a Revolutionary Military Council led by Vieira suspended the Constitution, concentrated powers, and repressed internal opposition, including within the PAIGC.

Aborted Political Transition and Civil War

Under international pressure and in the context of the end of the Cold War, Vieira’s regime undertook in the early 1990s a controlled political opening. In 1991, the principle of multiparty politics was adopted, ending the PAIGC’s constitutional monopoly. The first pluralistic elections were held in 1994. The PAIGC retained a parliamentary majority and Vieira narrowly won the presidential election.

Good to Know:

The country’s political transition took place in a context of extreme poverty (one of the ten poorest countries in the world). Its economy, essentially agricultural and increasingly dependent on cashew monoculture, is vulnerable due to low productivity, fluctuating world prices, and a lack of industrialization. Reforms in the 1980s-1990s oriented the country toward exporting this raw material, now the main source of export revenue, replacing peanuts.

Meanwhile, the armed forces, poorly paid and under-equipped, accumulated grievances against the government. In January 1998, the affair of arms deliveries to the Casamance independence movement (MFDC) in Senegal lit the fuse. The chief of staff, Ansumane Mané, accused of arms smuggling, was suspended and then dismissed. He counterattacked by publicly accusing the Defense Minister and other officers of being the real architects of the trafficking.

Example:

In June 1998, General Ansumane Mané led a mutiny against President João Bernardo Vieira. The insurgents seized barracks, the airport, and strategic points in Bissau, demanding Vieira’s resignation and free elections. Despite the intervention of Senegalese and Guinean troops in support of the government, the national army largely rallied to the rebellion. The fighting devastated the capital, forcing over 200,000 people to flee and causing a acute humanitarian crisis.

After several failed ceasefires and mediations by ECOWAS and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, a peace agreement, known as the Abuja Accord, was signed in November 1998. It provided for a government of national unity, the withdrawal of foreign troops, and elections before March 1999. But tensions persisted, clashes resumed in early 1999, and in May, rebel forces took the presidential palace. Vieira took refuge at the Portuguese embassy before capitulating and going into exile. Mané became the strongman of the country, even if formally a civilian interim president, Malam Bacai Sanhá, was appointed.

Fragile Democracy, Recurrent Coups

The 1999-2000 elections brought to the presidency Kumba Ialá, candidate of the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), the first real alternation of power since independence. But his government quickly sank into authoritarianism and economic disorder. In 2003, a bloodless coup, led by Chief of Staff Veríssimo Seabra, overthrew Ialá. A civilian transitional president, Henrique Rosa, was installed, and legislative elections judged generally free were held in 2004.

Stability, however, remained elusive. In 2005, João Bernardo Vieira returned from his Portuguese exile and won the presidential election, again defeating Malam Bacai Sanhá. The relationship between the political class and the army remained explosive. In 2009, Chief of Staff Batista Tagme Na Wai was killed in an explosion; the next day, President Vieira was assassinated by soldiers seeking to avenge the general’s death. These two attacks revealed the depth of internal rivalries and military interference in political life.

Attention:

The years following the 2012 coup d’état in the country were marked by new coup attempts. That year, the army interrupted the second round of the presidential election, arresting interim President Raimundo Pereira and the favored candidate Carlos Gomes Júnior. In response, regional organizations (African Union and ECOWAS) suspended the country and imposed a political transition. However, these measures failed to resolve the fundamental problem of the politicization of security forces.

Even when elections were organized and recognized, such as those in 2014 or 2019, contestation of results, military interference, and dissolutions of assemblies followed one another. A new coup attempt occurred in 2022, another in 2023, followed by the dissolution of Parliament. In 2025, a military coup yet again overthrew a president, leading to Guinea-Bissau’s suspension by ECOWAS.

An Economy Shaped by History: From the Slave Trade to Cashew Monoculture

Across these centuries, the country’s economy has been marked by successive specializations, almost always extroverted and dependent on external demands. Under slavery, the main “wealth” exported was human labor power, at the cost of a demographic and social hemorrhage. In the late colonial period, peanuts became the dominant crop, around which rural space was structured. After independence, cashew nuts took over, encouraged by liberal reforms and international demand.

90

In the 2010s, cashew nuts accounted for about 90% of Guinea-Bissau’s export value.

This dependence on monoculture is reminiscent of the hypertrophy of the slave trade in the time of Kaabu or peanuts under colonization: in all cases, an essential part of the wealth produced is captured externally, while the domestic economy remains vulnerable to price shocks, climatic hazards, and lack of diversification. The exploitation of cashew puts pressure on forests, with tens of thousands of hectares of natural cover destroyed each year according to estimates, and contributes to undermining food security by competing with other food crops, such as rice.

30

The 1998 war caused a collapse of nearly 30% in cashew production in Guinea-Bissau.

Continuities and Ruptures in the Country’s History

Reading the country’s history in Guinea-Bissau means identifying lines of force that transcend changes of era. The centrality of military campaigns, first those of Kaabu, then those of the Fulani jihads, then Portuguese offensives, and finally the liberation war, shows a society regularly reshaped by political violence.

Good to Know:

This territory has always played a pivotal role: a crossroads between the Sahara and the Atlantic under the Mali and Kaabu empires, a central point of the Atlantic slave trade, an epicenter of Portuguese colonial wars, and finally the stage of a pioneering anti-colonial revolution that contributed to the fall of the dictatorship in Portugal.

Finally, there is a common thread around the question of effective sovereignty. For centuries, Portugal claimed “Guinea of Cape Verde” without controlling its interior. More recently, the formal independence of 1974 coexists with heavy economic dependence, persistent military interference, and weakened civilian institutions. The rapid recognition of Guinea-Bissau by several dozen states in 1973-1974 illustrates the symbolic importance of the PAIGC’s struggle, but does not protect the young country from the logics of rent-seeking, internal rivalries, and the lingering effects of the colonial order.

Good to Know:

The country has an ethnic diversity stemming from ancient migrations, preserves the memory of kingdoms like Kaabu, and bears the scars of the slave trade. Its agricultural landscapes have been shaped by the cultivation of peanuts and then cashew. Its political culture is marked by the central role of the army and the legacy of the PAIGC. Understanding this trajectory allows us to grasp how this former ‘secondary colony’ became a laboratory of African decolonization, while illustrating the challenges of post-colonial state-building.

Cyril Jarnias

Cyril Jarnias is an independent expert in international wealth management with over 20 years of experience. As an expatriate himself, he is dedicated to helping individuals and business leaders build, protect, and pass on their wealth with complete peace of mind.

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