The November 23 elections ended with a consequence already disputed between the outgoing president Umaro Sissoco Embaló and his predominant opponent, Fernando Dias da Costa. There was no time for a decision. The navy introduced that it had seized energy in Guinea-Bissau, one of the crucial fragile states in West Africa, deposing and arresting the incumbent president Embaló himself.
The dynamic follows that of the coups d’état that multiplied on a continental scale between 2019 and 2023: the pictures close to the presidential palace and the crescendo of tensions till the announcement broadcast on public tv. Dinis N’Tchama, a navy spokesman, introduced that “the military high command for the re-establishment of national and public order” has determined to oust the president and dissolve all of the establishments of Bissau “until further notice”. The overthrow, he added, occurred in response to a “plan” to “manipulate the results” of the polls and destabilize a rustic of just below 2 million inhabitants. “I have been deposed,” Embaló himself declared to the French broadcaster France24.
The fragilities of Bissau between instability and visitors
The Guinean putsch confirms the popularity for precariousness of a rustic which has skilled no less than 9 tried and 5 profitable coups d’état in about half a century of independence from Portugal, lengthening and widening the so-called Coup Belt: the coup belt that welds the Atlantic coast to that of the Red Sea with navy juntas, “thanks” to a whirlwind of 9 reversals between 2019 and 2024 alone. Sunday’s vote itself was accompanied by clashes over the legitimacy of Embaló, accused of getting violated the utmost five-year time period set for mandates within the nation. The deadline would have fallen to February 27, however a Supreme Court ruling prolonged the deadline to September. The polls raised doubts about legitimacy and sparked tensions between Embaló and Dias, each satisfied of victory and at odds with their opponent’s claims. The dispute has already disappeared after the blitz that froze the nation’s establishments and likewise hit the opposition, with the arrest of presidential challenger Dias and former prime minister Domingos Simões Pereira.
The coup opens a season of additional instability in a rustic already affected by a number of crises, beginning with a poverty charge that fluctuates between the estimates of nicely over 60% by the African Development Bank and that of 67% recorded by the UN company Unicef. The economic system is supported above all by agriculture and is anticipated to develop at a charge of over 5% estimated by the World Bank for 2025, pushed by an excellent yield from cashew crops. The Bank itself highlights the dangers implicit in dependence on uncooked materials costs, market fluctuations and political instability now revived by the putsch on the finish of November. The precariousness of Guinean establishments favors the thriving trafficking of cocaine arriving from Latin America and transported in large volumes to its coasts. In September 2024 alone, the authorities declared the seizure of two.63 tons of cocaine from Venezuela.
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