[18][19]: 20 The Balanta and Jola had weak or non-existent institutions of kingship but emphasised decentralization, with power invested in heads of villages and families.

[19]: 218–219 Kaabu was established first as a province of Mali through the conquest in the 13th century of the Senegambia by Tiramakhan Traore, a general under Sundiata Keita.

[20]: 4 The slave trade dominated the economy, and the warrior classes grew rich with imported cloth, beads, metalware, and firearms.

[27]: 7, 12–13, 16 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.

[19]: 142 After 1520 trade and settlements increased on the mainland, populated by Portuguese and native traders, as well as some Spanish, Genoese, English, French, and Dutch.

These posts traded directly with the peoples of the interior for resources such as gum arabic, ivory, hides, civet, dyes, enslaved Africans, and gold.

[19]: 243–4 With the end of the Iberian Union in 1640, King João IV attempted to restrict the Spanish trade in Guinea that had flourished for the previous 60 years.

Afro-Portuguese traders and colonists, however, were not in a position to deny the free trade that the African kings demanded, as they had come to rely on European products and goods as necessities.

[30][28] 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.

[19]: 229  The relationship between kings and European traders was a partnership, with the two regularly making deals on how the trade was to be conducted, defining who could be enslaved and who could not, and the prices of the slaves.

The dispute over the status of Bolama was resolved in Portugal's favor through the mediation of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870, but French encroachment on Portuguese claims continued.

Initially committed to peaceful methods, the 1959 Pidjiguiti massacre pushed the party towards more militarized tactics, leaning heavily on the political mobilization of the peasantry in the countryside.

Aided by the jungle-like terrain, it had easy access to borders with neighbouring allies and large quantities of arms from Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, and left-leaning African countries.

[22]: 289–90  By 1973, the PAIGC was in control of many parts of Guinea, although the movement suffered a setback in January 1973 when its founder and leader Amilcar Cabral was assassinated.

[33] 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.

Sanhá initially refused to concede, claiming that tampering and electoral fraud occurred in two constituencies including the capital, Bissau.

[48] 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.

On the evening of 12 April 2012, members of the country's military staged a coup d'état and arrested the interim president and a leading presidential candidate.

[53] Former vice chief of staff, General Mamadu Ture Kuruma, assumed control of the country in the transitional period and started negotiations with opposition parties.

[63] A journalist working for the station recalled, while wishing to stay anonymous, that one of their colleagues had recognized one of the cars carrying the attackers as belonging to the presidency.

[66][67] On 11 September 2024, President Umaro Sissoco Embaló announced that he would not seek a second term in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for November 2025.

[82] A long period of political instability has resulted in depressed economic activity, deteriorating social conditions, and increased macroeconomic imbalances.

[83] 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.

[86] 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.

These languages are the link between individuals of the same ethnic background and daily used in villages, between neighbours or friends, traditional and religious ceremonies, and also used in contact between the urban and rural populations.

[103] Various studies suggest that slightly less than half of the population of Guinea-Bissau is Muslim, while substantial minorities follow folk religions or Christianity.

[107]This Pew research also stated that countries in this specific study that declared to not have any clear dominant sectarian identity were mostly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa.

An incident in July 2022, when a Catholic church in the overwhelmingly Muslim region of Gabú was vandalised, raised concern amongst the Christian community that Islamic extremism might be infiltrating the country.

However, civil unrest and other factors have combined over the years to keep gumbe, and other genres, out of mainstream audiences, even in generally syncretist African countries.

[119] Tina and tinga are other popular genres, while extent folk traditions include ceremonial music used in funerals, initiations, and other rituals, as well as Balanta brosca and kussundé, Mandinga djambadon, and the kundere sound of the Bissagos Islands.