Guinea-Bissau, officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, is a country in West Africa that covers 36,125 square kilometres (13,948 sq mi) with an estimated population of 2,026,778. It borders Senegal to its north and Guinea to its southeast.
The region now known as Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa, has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. During the 13th century AD, it was a province of the Mali Empire which later became independent as the empire of Kaabu. Portugal claimed the region during the 1450s, but its control was limited to several forts along the coast during most of this period; it gained control of the mainland after the pacification campaigns from 1912 to 1915. The offshore Bijagos Islands were not colonized until 1936. Guinea-Bissau became independent in 1974, and the introduction of multi-party politics in 1991 led to the first multi-party elections in 1994. A civil war broke out in 1998, which lasted until the following year.
"Esta É a Nossa Pátria Bem Amada" is the national anthem of Guinea-Bissau. Written in 1963 by Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) and composed by Xiao He (1918–2010), it was adopted upon independence from Portugal in 1974.
Aristides Maria Pereira was a Cape Verdean politician. He was the first President of Cape Verde, serving from 1975 to 1991.
Luís Severino de Almeida Cabral was a Bissau-Guinean politician who was the first President of Guinea-Bissau. He served from 1974 to 1980, when a military coup d'état led by João Bernardo Vieira deposed him. Luís Cabral was a half-brother of Amílcar Cabral, with whom he co-founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1956.
The music of Guinea-Bissau is most widely associated with the polyrhythmic genre of gumbe, the country's primary musical export. Tina and tinga are other popular genres.
Amílcar Lopes Cabral was a Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, political organizer, and diplomat. He was one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders. He was also a pan-Africanist and intellectual nationalist revolutionary poet.
The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde is a political party in Guinea-Bissau. Originally formed to peacefully campaign for independence from Portugal, the party turned to armed conflict in the 1960s and was one of the belligerents in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence. Towards the end of the war, the party established a socialist one-party state, which remained intact until multi-party democracy was introduced in the early 1990s. Although the party won the first multi-party elections in 1994, it was removed from power in the 1999–2000 elections. However, it returned to office after winning parliamentary elections in 2004 and presidential elections in 2005, since which it has remained the largest party in the National People's Assembly.
The African Party of Independence of Cape Verde is a democratic socialist political party in Cape Verde. It was the sole legal party in the country from 1981 to 1990. Its members are nicknamed "os tambarinas" in Portuguese, and they identify themselves with the color yellow.
The Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, also known as the Bissau-Guinean War of Independence, was an armed independence conflict that took place in Portuguese Guinea from 1963 to 1974. It was fought between Portugal and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, an armed independence movement backed by Cuba, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Brazil. The war is commonly referred to as "Portugal's Vietnam" because it was a protracted guerrilla war which had extremely high costs in men and material and which created significant internal political turmoil in Portugal.
Ansumane Mané was a Bissau-Guinean soldier who led a 1998 uprising against the government of President João Bernardo Vieira, which caused a brief but bloody civil war.
Operation Green Sea was an amphibious attack on Conakry, the capital of Guinea, by between 350 and 420 Portuguese soldiers and Portuguese-led Guinean fighters in November 1970. The goals of the operation included the overthrow of Ahmed Sékou Touré's government, capture of the leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), Amílcar Cabral, destruction of the naval and air assets of the PAIGC and its Guinean supporters, and the rescue of Portuguese POWs held in Conakry.
Guinea-Bissau–Russia relations are the bilateral foreign relations between Guinea-Bissau and Russia.
Flora Gomes is a Bissau-Guinean film director. He was born in Cadique, Guinea-Bissau on 31 December 1949 and after high school in Cuba, he decided to study film at the Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos in Havana.
Cape Verde–Guinea Bissau relations refers to the bilateral relationship between the Republic of Cape Verde and the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. Cape Verde is an island country about 900 km north-west of Guinea-Bissau, a coastal West African country. Both were colonies of the Portuguese Empire and they campaigned together for independence with a plan for unification, but the countries separated after 1980. The two countries were both founder members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) in 1996, and are each members of the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embaló is a Bissau-Guinean politician serving as the president of Guinea-Bissau since February 2020. He is a political scientist and military officer who previously served as prime minister between November 2016 and January 2018.
The 1980 Guinea-Bissau coup d'état was the bloodless military coup that took place in Guinea-Bissau on 14 November 1980, led by Prime Minister General João Bernardo Vieira. It led to the deposition of President Luís Cabral, who held the office since 1973, while the country's War of Independence was still ongoing.
Udju Azul di Yonta / The Blue Eyes of Yonta is a 1991 Portuguese film, the second film by the Bissau-Guinean director Flora Gomes. The government of Guinea-Bissau helped in production, together with the Institute of Cinema in Portugal, Vermedia Productions, and Portuguese television.
Super Biton de Ségou, Super Biton for short and also known as the Orchestre Régional de Segou and Super Biton National de Ségou, are an African jazz musical group. They were especially popular and influential in the 1970s, when they became the national orchestra of Mali, and in the first half of the 1980s. They formed in Ségou, Mali, in the 1960s, had up to 19 members at one point, but dwindled after 1986 after band leader Amadou Bâ left. After a hiatus, they re-formed with four new members and guitarist Mama Sissoko as band leader in 2001, and started playing the closing set at the Festival sur le Niger in Ségou each year.
The cinema of Guinea-Bissau arose along with the country's independence. Since the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, film in the country has remained an underfunded state-controlled industry. The earliest filmmaking in the country was influenced by Amílcar Cabral's views on propaganda, and consisted of documentation of the war of independence. Although the war was documented by foreign filmmakers, Cabral arranged for the education of four young Bissau-Guineans in Cuba in film technique. Early Bissau-Guinean films were produced by this group, and consisted of propaganda documentaries about the revolutionary struggle, although much of their footage is now lost.
