Guinea-Bissau, officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, is a country in West Africa that covers with an estimated population of 2,080,000. It borders Senegal to its north and Guinea to its southeast.
Guinea-Bissau was once part of the kingdom of Kaabu, as well as part of the Mali Empire. The remainder speak a variety of native African languages. The nation is home to numerous followers of Islam, Christianity, and multiple traditional faiths. The country's GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world.
Guinea-Bissau is a member of the United Nations, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Community of Portuguese Language Countries, , Alliance of Small Island States and the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone. It was also a member of the now-defunct Latin Union. As of November 2025, its membership in Economic Community of West African States and African Union has been suspended after a coup d'etat.
History
Pre-European contact
The ancient history of what is now Guinea-Bissau is poorly understood by historians. The earliest inhabitants were the Jola, Papel, Manjak, Balanta, and Biafada peoples. Later the Mandinka and Fulani migrated into the region in the 13th and 15th centuries respectively. They pushed the earlier inhabitants towards the coast and onto the Bijagos islands.
The Balanta and Jola had weak or non-existent institutions of kingship but emphasised decentralization, with power invested in heads of villages and families. Relations between the kingdom and the Portuguese colonisers were initially warm, but deteriorated over time.
Biafada kingdoms
The Biafada people inhabited the area around the Rio Grande de Buba in three kingdoms: Biguba, Guinala, and Bissege.
Bijagos Islands
In the Bijagos Islands, people of different ethnic origins tended to settle in separate settlements. Great cultural diversity developed in the archipelago.
Mali declined gradually, beginning in the 14th century. By the early 16th century, the expanding power of Koli Tenguella cut off formerly secure Mali.
Kaabu became an independent federation of kingdoms. The ruling classes were composed of elite warriors known as the Nyancho (Ñaanco) who traced their patrilineal lineage to Tiramakhan Traore. The Nyancho were a warrior culture, reputed to be excellent cavalry men and raiders. The Kaabu Mansaba was seated in Kansala, in what is today the Gabú region.
The slave trade dominated the economy, and the warrior classes grew rich with imported cloth, beads, metalware, and firearms.
Although the Portuguese authorities initially discouraged European settlement on the mainland, this prohibition was ignored by lançados and tangomãos, who largely assimilated into indigenous culture and customs.
Slave trade
Guinea-Bissau was among the first regions whose people engaged in the Atlantic slave trade. For centuries its warriors had sent captives as slaves to North Africa. While it did not produce the same number of enslaved people to export to the Americas as other regions, the effects were still significant. In Cape Verde, Guinean slaves were instrumental in developing the labor-intensive plantation economy: they cultivated and processed, growing indigo and cotton, and also wove the panos cloth that became a standard currency in West Africa. After Cabral's death, party leadership fell to Aristides Pereira, who would later become the first president of the Republic of Cape Verde.
thumb|Portuguese-held (green), disputed (yellow) and rebel-held areas (red) in Portuguese-Guinea and other colonies 1970
Independence (1973–2000)
thumb|[[PAIGC forces raise the flag of Guinea-Bissau in 1974.]]
Independence was unilaterally declared on 24 September 1973, which is now celebrated as the country's Independence Day, a public holiday. The country was formally recognized as independent on 10 September 1974. Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania was the first country to formally recognise Guinea-Bissau and the first to sign agreements with the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.
Upon the nation's independence, it declared "Esta É a Nossa Pátria Amada" as its national anthem. Until 1996, this was shared with Cape Verde, which later adopted its own official national anthem "Cântico da Liberdade".
Luís Cabral, brother of Amílcar and co-founder of PAIGC, was appointed the first president of Guinea-Bissau.
The country was controlled by the military council until 1984. The first multi-party elections were held in 1994. An army uprising in May 1998 led to the Guinea-Bissau Civil War and the president's ousting in June 1999. Elections were held again in 2000, and Kumba Ialá was elected president.
21st century
In September 2003, a military coup occurred. The military arrested Ialá on the charge of being "unable to solve the problems". After being delayed several times, legislative elections were held in March 2004. A mutiny in October 2004 over pay arrears resulted in the death of the head of the armed forces.
In June 2005, presidential elections were held for the first time since the coup that deposed Ialá. Ialá returned as the candidate for the PRS, claiming to be the legitimate president of the country, but the election was won by former president João Bernardo Vieira, deposed in the 1999 coup. Vieira beat Malam Bacai Sanhá in a run-off election. Sanhá initially refused to concede, claiming that tampering and electoral fraud occurred in two constituencies including the capital, Bissau. Foreign monitors described the elections as "calm and organized", despite some reports of arms entering the country prior to the election and few "disturbances during campaigning", including attacks on government offices by unidentified gunmen.
Three years later, Sanhá's PAIGC won a strong parliamentary majority, with 67 of 100 seats, in the parliamentary election held in November 2008. In November 2008, President Vieira's official residence was attacked by members of the armed forces, killing a guard but leaving the president unharmed.
On 2 March 2009, however, Vieira was assassinated by what preliminary reports indicated to be a group of soldiers avenging the death of the head of joint chiefs of staff, General Batista Tagme Na Wai, who had been killed in an explosion the day before. Vieira's death did not trigger widespread violence, but there were signs of turmoil in the country, according to the advocacy group Swisspeace. Military leaders in the country pledged to respect the constitutional order of succession. National Assembly Speaker Raimundo Pereira was appointed as an interim president until a nationwide election on 28 June 2009. It was won by Malam Bacai Sanhá, against Kumba Ialá as the presidential candidate of the PRS.
On 9 January 2012, President Sanhá died, and Pereira was again appointed as an interim president. On the evening of 12 April 2012, members of the country's military staged a coup d'état and arrested Pereira and a leading presidential candidate. Former vice chief of staff, General Mamadu Ture Kuruma, assumed control of the country in the transitional period and started negotiations with opposition parties.
The 2014 general election saw José Mário Vaz elected President of Guinea-Bissau. Vaz became the first elected president to complete his five-year mandate. In the 2019 presidential elections, Vaz was eliminated in the first round, and Umaro Sissoco Embaló was elected president. Embaló, the first president to be elected without the backing of the PAIGC, took office in February 2020.
On 1 February 2022, there was an attempted coup d'état against Embaló. On 2 February 2022, state radio announced that four assailants and two members of the presidential guard had been killed in the incident. The African Union and ECOWAS both condemned the coup. Six days after the attempted coup d'état, on 7 February 2022, there was an attack on the building of Rádio Capital FM, a radio station critical of the Bissau-Guinean government; this was the second time the radio station suffered an attack of this nature in less than two years. On 11 September 2024, Embaló announced that he would not seek a second term in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for November 2025. On 3 March 2025, Embaló said that he would run for a second term in November, contrary to his earlier vows to step down.
On 26 November 2025, soldiers announced on state television that they had seized power, three days after the 2025 general election. The military imposed a curfew, closed national borders, and suspended media outlets; Embaló and opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira were arrested. In the past, the government had been highly centralized. Multi-party governance was not established until mid-1991.
The two main political parties are the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) and the PRS (Party for Social Renewal). There are more than 20 minor parties. Following a contested first round in the 2025 Presidential Election, the Army of Guinea-Bissau, led by the Brigadier General Dinis Incanha, organized a coup and took over the Guinean government on November 26th 2025. Since November 27, 2025, General Horta Inta-A Na Man has been serving as the Transitional President and as Chief of the High Command, which is the person leading the High Military Command for the Restoration of National Security and Public Order.
Foreign relations
Guinea-Bissau is a founding member state of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth, an international organisation and political association of Lusophone nations where Portuguese is an official language.
Military
A 2019 estimate put the size of the Guinea-Bissau Armed Forces at around 4,400 personnel and military spending is less than 2% of GDP.
Administrative divisions
Guinea-Bissau is divided into eight regions () and one autonomous sector (). These, in turn, are subdivided into 37 Sectors. The regions are:
At , The country is home to two ecoregions: Guinean forest–savanna mosaic and Guinean mangroves.
Climate
Guinea-Bissau is warm all year round with mild temperature fluctuations; it averages . The average rainfall for Bissau is , although this is almost entirely accounted for during the rainy season which falls between June and September/October. From December through April, the country experiences drought.
Economy
thumb|left|Seat of the Central Bank of Guinea-Bissau
thumb|left|Petrol station in [[São Domingos (Guinea-Bissau)|São Domingos]]
Guinea-Bissau's GDP per capita and Human Development Index are among the lowest in the world. More than two-thirds of the population lives below the poverty line. The economy depends mainly on agriculture; fish, cashew nuts, and ground nuts are its major exports.
A long period of political instability has resulted in depressed economic activity, deteriorating social conditions, and increased macroeconomic imbalances. It takes longer on average to register a new business in Guinea-Bissau (233 days or about 33 weeks) than in any other country in the world except Suriname.
Guinea-Bissau has started to show some economic advances after a pact of stability was signed by the main political parties of the country, leading to an IMF-backed structural reform program.
After several years of economic downturn and political instability, in 1997, Guinea-Bissau entered the CFA franc monetary system, bringing about some internal monetary stability. The civil war from 1998 to 1999, and a military coup in September 2003, again disrupted economic activity, leaving a substantial part of the economic and social infrastructure in ruins and intensifying the already widespread poverty. Following the parliamentary elections in March 2004 and presidential elections in July 2005, the country is trying to recover from the long period of instability, despite a still-fragile political situation.
Beginning around 2005, drug traffickers based in Latin America began to use Guinea-Bissau, along with several neighbouring West African nations, as a transshipment point to Europe for cocaine. The nation was described by a United Nations official as being at risk for becoming a "narco-state". The government and the military have done little to stop drug trafficking, which increased after the 2012 coup d'état.
The government of Guinea-Bissau continues to be ravaged by illegal drug distribution, according to The Economist.
Guinea-Bissau is a member of the Organization for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA).