On 26 November 2025 a group of army officers in Guinea-Bissau announced they had taken “total control”, suspended the electoral process and detained leading politicians – moves widely described in the press as a military coup. The seizure followed a disputed presidential vote and came amid long-running institutional weakness, elite factionalism, and the country’s persistent role in trans-Atlantic drug-trafficking networks. The event risks deepening national paralysis, fuelling regional instability in West Africa, and reviving international counter-drug and governance concerns.
West Africa has been hit by multiple military takeovers over the past three years, including two in Mali, one in Guinea, two in Burkina Faso and one in Gabon. The military takeover is the latest in a string of coups and attempted coups in Guinea-Bissau since it gained independence. The country is one of Portugal’s former African colonies that gained independence in the wake of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. Guinea–Bissau began life as an independent country with minimal assets. Politics, including violent politics, was a matter of attempting to capture the very limited resources that were available.
The average yearly income in the country of 2.2 million people was just $963 (£728) in 2024, according to the World Bank. There have been at least nine coups in Guinea-Bissau between independence and Embaló taking office in 2020, according to Reuters. Embaló claimed to have survived three coup attempts during his first term in office, the most recent in October. The incumbent president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, had been vying to become the first president to win a second term in power in three decades. Both he and his main rival, Fernando Dias, claimed they won in the first round of elections, held on Sunday.
Why did this happen?
Soldiers appeared on state television declaring that the military had formed a “High Military Command for the Restoration of Order”, closed borders, imposed curfews and suspended media and the electoral process. Reports say President Umaro Sissoco Embaló and several senior politicians were detained; gunfire was heard near government and electoral buildings after rival candidates both claimed victory. International and regional bodies – including the UN, African Union and ECOWAS – immediately condemned the action and called for a return to constitutional order.
Electoral trigger and Competing Claims of Victory: The coup leaders have issued a communique, claiming the “High Military Command for the Restoration of National Security and Public Order” was reacting to a destabilisation plot “put in place by certain national politicians with the participation of [a]well-known drug baron.” The camp of incumbent President Embaló and opposition candidate Fernando Dias de Costa have each claimed first-round victory in Guinea-Bissau’s 23 November presidential election, even though the official provisional results are not due until Thursday 27 November.
Weak institutions and personalisation of power: The coup and past ones in Guinea-Bissau are tied to “how much (state) institutions have been undermined and weakened,” said Beverly Ochieng, a senior security analyst at the consultancy Control Risks. Under Embaló, she said, “the legislature was dissolved unilaterally, the judiciary was operating under capacity, and there were deep-seated sentiments around political influence.”
Embaló, who has repeatedly clashed with parliament and dissolved it in 2022, entered the poll as the favourite, not least because the country’s main opposition force, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), and its leader Domingos Simões Pereira were barred from participating. But the unexpectedly competitive performance of Fernando Dias de Costa fractured the political narrative, with both camps moving swiftly to claim victory ahead of the electoral commission’s announcement. The arrests signal a dramatic rupture between the presidency and the military hierarchy, long regarded as the ultimate arbiter of political power in Guinea-Bissau. Analysts say this moment was years in the making.
Militarised politics and army autonomy: Guinea-Bissau has a tumultuous history of conflicts between its army and state powers. While military officers retain organisational connection, networks and backup leverage that allow them to act as kingmakers. When elites fracture, the armed forces remain a ready arbiter.
For instance, the leadership loyalties within the armed forces, including senior officers with close ties to political figures, show that splits in the military can rapidly convert political crises into takeovers. Reports indicate that some leaders were close to the deposed president highlight this dynamic.
Criminal economies and state capture: The UN labelled Guinea-Bissau a “narco state” in 2008 because of its role as a hub for the global cocaine trade. Situated between Senegal and Guinea, its coastline features numerous river deltas and the 88 islands of the Bijagós archipelago, which experts said had provided the natural, discrete drop-off points used by Colombian drug cartels.
While the drug economy creates powerful informal actors, corrupting politics and fragmenting loyalties between civilian leaders, military officers, and criminal networks. That criminalization of politics raises the stakes for control of the state and gives the military both motive and means to intervene.
Regional contagion and the “coup belt”: Since 2020 several West and Central African states have experienced coups; regional precedent and weakened ECOWAS deterrence make military intervention today less costly politically and materially than it might have been a decade earlier. This erodes the perceived costs of seizure as an option to resolve political impasses. The West African nation has a history of coups. Embaló was seeking to be the first president to win a second term when the military seized power.
What are the implications?
Land, air and sea borders that had been closed on Wednesday were reopened and a night-time curfew lifted. But demonstrations and marches were banned. According to media reports, soldiers toppled the civilian leadership in a swift power grab before official election results could be announced and installed Major-General Horta Inta-a as transitional president. He formerly served as personal Chief of Staff to the president and later on, as the Chief of Army General Staff.
Political analyst Ryan Cummings said Embalo’s past moves lent credibility to claims of a sham coup against him that could see him reinstated by the military government. But, he added, it is also “highly plausible” the military acted alone to avoid a deadlock in a country where about 70 percent of the 2.2 million population is poor.
“There have been growing concerns that longstanding disputes between Embalo and (the opposition) had forced Guinea-Bissau into a political deadlock which has been detrimental to the socioeconomic trajectory of the country,” he said.
For ECOWAS and the African Union, both still shaken by a wave of coups in West Africa, there is little interest in parsing the nuances of Guinea-Bissau’s political theatre.
Meanwhile, the African Union and ECOWAS will likely pressure the military to return to democratic rule as soon as possible, Cummings said. Both have, in the past, suspended and sanctioned countries in which coups have taken place, before reinstating them after clear timelines for elections are set. ECOWAS upheld suspensions on the military-led Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger for several months before the three exited the bloc and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in January.
A junta that either tolerates trafficking or cannot control it will prompt anxious responses and possibly targeted sanctions or aid conditionality. “The drug cartels’ influence is depending on the lack of the legitimacy (of the government),” political analyst Aly Fary Ndiaye told Al Jazeera. “If, for example, we have a military coup, they will be more likely to create an environment through which they can grow their business by supporting or funding those who are in the army, so that they can shut their eyes and let them grow their business.”
IN’Ta meanwhile released an official communique on what the military junta plans to be the way forward: According to the document, the junta plans to remain in office as an interim government for one year, during which it says it hopes to prepare for the return to constitutional order and to “normalcy” in the country. But following this seizure of power by force in a country that has a history of both successful and failed military coups, “normalcy” may remain an idea that is elusive for many in Guinea-Bissau.