Only two percent speak the official language as a mother tongue
West Africa's Guinea-Bissau covers 36,125 square kilometres with roughly 2.08 million people between Senegal and Guinea. Once tied to Kaabu and the Mali Empire, it became Portuguese Guinea before a liberation war brought PAIGC one-party rule, military stretches, and fragile multiparty votes after 1994.
The Jola, Papel, Manjak, Balanta and Biafada were the earliest known inhabitants; Mandinka arrived in the 13th century and Fulani in the 15th, pushing older groups toward the coast and onto the Bijagós islands. The Balanta and Jola vested power in village and family heads, while Mandinka, Fula, Papel, Manjak and Biafada chiefs owed allegiance to kings.
Kaabu began as a Mali province after the 13th-century conquests of Tiramakhan Traore, a general of Sundiata Keita, and became an independent federation as Mali faded. Its Nyancho warrior elite, famed horsemen, ruled from Kansala and grew rich on the slave trade, exporting perhaps 700 captives a year in the 17th and 18th centuries, until the Fula defeated Kaabu at Kansala in 1867. On the Bijagós, men built boats and raided the mainland while women farmed, built houses and chose their husbands.
Alvise Cadamosto reached the coast in 1455 and Diogo Gomes in 1456. Portugal tried to bar mainland settlement, but lançado and tangomão traders adopted local ways and ignored royal licences, and after 1520 ports such as Cacheu, Bissau and Guinala flourished alongside Spanish, English, French and Dutch rivals. The territory was colonised as Portuguese Guinea in the 19th century.
Independence was declared in 1973 and recognised in 1974. The victorious PAIGC built a one-party socialist state under military control from 1984 until multiparty elections in 1994, and several coups have since interrupted handovers of power. Only about 2 percent speak official Portuguese as a first language, while Guinea-Bissau Creole, the national language, is a first language for 54 percent.
Source: Guinea-Bissau
