Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony of 2m people on the west African coast. Its politics has been characterised by a succession of coups—at least ten attempts since independence from Portugal in 1974—and combustible elections.
The country's powerful army has long had links to international drug traffickers, who are so enmeshed in its politics that Colombian drug lords can be spotted driving luxury cars around Bissau, the capital. The cocaine trade flourished under Umaro Sissoco Embaló, according to Lucia Bird of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
On November 26th 2025 army officers announced they had seized "total control" of the government. Appearing on state television after gunfire was heard near the presidential palace, they said they had closed the country's borders and suspended the ongoing electoral process. Embaló was arrested and said in a phone call to France 24 that he had been "deposed". A key opponent of the president, the army chief and his deputy were also detained.
The coup was triggered by an electoral dispute. Both Embaló and his rival, Fernando Dias da Costa, had claimed victory before results of the November 23rd election were formally announced; the electoral commission had been due to weigh in on November 27th. Many in Guinea-Bissau questioned whether this was a "normal coup": suspicions were rife that the president had orchestrated the attempt as a pretext for retaining power, as he had been accused of doing before. Should the putsch succeed, it would be the 11th successful coup in Africa this decade—far more than in the 2000s or the 2010s.
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.