Portuguese-speaking African countries

The Portuguese-speaking African countries (Portuguese: Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and, since 2011, Equatorial Guinea.

[2] The PALOP countries have signed official agreements with Portugal,[3] the European Union[2] and the United Nations,[4] and they work together to promote the development of culture, education and the preservation of the Portuguese language.

[7] Originally a Portuguese colony before it was sold to Spain in 1778 as part of peace arrangements involving also the colony of Sacramento in the Southern Cone of the Americas, Equatorial Guinea has adopted Portuguese as the country's third official language in order to be allowed into the CPLP, despite its limited historical and cultural commonalities with the other countries.

[9] These five African countries are former colonies of the Portuguese Empire, which collapsed shortly after the Carnation Revolution military coup of 1974 in Lisbon.

The legacy of Portuguese empire-building pervades the postcolonial discourse that attempts to explain the development of the modern nation state in Lusophone Africa and shed light on its failures.