Amílcar Lopes Cabral (Portuguese: [ɐˈmilkaɾ ˈlɔpɨʃ kɐˈbɾal]; (1924-09-12)12 September 1924 – (1973-01-20)20 January 1973) was a Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, political organizer, and diplomat.

He was born in the town of Bafatá, Portuguese Guinea (located in modern-day Guinea-Bissau) to Cape Verdean parents, Juvenal António Lopes da Costa Cabral and Iva Pinhel Évora, both hailing from Santiago.

He was also one of the founding members of Movimento Popular Libertação de Angola (MPLA) later in the same year, together with Agostinho Neto, whom he met in Portugal, and other Angolan nationalists.

[citation needed] In preparation for the independence war, Cabral set up training camps in Ghana with the permission of Kwame Nkrumah.

[7] Cabral trained his lieutenants through various techniques, including mock conversations to provide them with effective communication skills to aid their efforts in mobilizing Guinean traditional leaders to support the PAIGC.

Cabral realized that the war effort could only be sustained if his troops could be fed and taught to live off the land, alongside the larger populace.

[citation needed] Cabral and the PAIGC also set up a trade-and-barter bazaar system that moved around the country and made staple goods available to the countryside at prices lower than that of colonial store owners.

After the assassination, about one hundred officers and guerrilla soldiers of the PAIGC, accused of involvement in the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of Amílcar Cabral and the attempt to seize power in the movement, were summarily executed.

Less than a month after the assassination, the United States concluded that then-colonial power Portugal was not directly involved in his death, according to official documents made public in 2006.

Even so, the US State Department's Information and Investigation Services also concluded that "Lisbon's complicity" in the assassination of the leader of the struggle for Cape Verde's and Guinea-Bissau's independence "cannot be ruled out.

...one of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa, Comrade Amílcar Cabral, who instilled in us tremendous confidence in the future and the success of his struggle for liberation.Cabral is considered a "revolutionary theoretician as significant as Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara",[13] one "whose influence reverberated far beyond the African continent.

There is a block of flats named Amílcar Cabral Court on Porteus Road in west London, situated in the Paddington Green area.