African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde

The party was founded in Bissau on 19 September 1956 by Amílcar Cabral, his brother Luís Cabral, Aristides Pereira, Fernando Fortes, Júlio Almeida and Elisée Turpin. According to the English-language source it was first called the African Party of Independence and was based on the Movement for the National Independence of Portuguese Guinea founded in 1954 by Henri Labéry and Amílcar Cabral; Rafael Paula Barbosa was its first president and Amílcar Cabral its secretary-general. At first it sought self-determination peacefully, but after the Pidjiguiti massacre of striking dockworkers in Bissau on 3 August 1959 (the English-language source says 50 were killed) it decided to prepare for armed struggle and in September 1959 moved its headquarters to Conakry in neighbouring Guinea. In 1961 it formed the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP) with the MPLA, FRELIMO and others.

The armed struggle was concentrated on mainland Guinea rather than in Cape Verde, where geography made guerrilla war difficult and the party worked clandestinely. The attack on the Portuguese barracks at Tite on 23 January 1963 is regarded as the start of the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence. The First Congress, held in liberated Cassacá in February 1964, created a regular army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP), to fight alongside the guerrilla units. The party received arms and training from the Soviet Union, Cuba and China, and after Cabral attended the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966 Cuba sent military experts, doctors and technicians. According to the English-language source, by 1967 the PAIGC effectively controlled two-thirds of Portuguese Guinea. António de Spínola, governor from 1968, tried to win back the population by building schools, hospitals and roads, and in November 1970 Portuguese forces raided Conakry in Operation Green Sea.

Between August and November 1972 the PAIGC held elections in the liberated areas for regional councils, whose representatives formed the People's National Assembly; according to the English-language source about 78,000 people voted, 97% of them for the PAIGC lists. On 20 January 1973 Cabral was assassinated in Conakry by the naval commander Inocêncio Kani as part of an internal plot, but the plot failed to topple the leadership, and Aristides Pereira took over. On 24 September 1973 the People's National Assembly, meeting at Madina do Boé, proclaimed the independence of Guinea-Bissau, which the UN General Assembly recognised in November by 93 votes to 7. Portugal recognised it on 10 September 1974, and Cape Verde became independent separately on 5 July 1975.

After independence the PAIGC was the sole legal party of both countries, with Luís Cabral leading Guinea-Bissau and Pereira Cape Verde. The plan for union collapsed when João Bernardo Vieira overthrew Luís Cabral in a coup on 14 November 1980, and in January 1981 the Cape Verdean leadership set up the separate African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). After multi-party politics were introduced in 1991, the PAIGC won 62 of 100 seats in the first elections in 1994 and Vieira was elected president. Civil war broke out in June 1998; Vieira was ousted in May 1999 and expelled from the party, and in the elections of November 1999 the PAIGC fell to third place.

The PAIGC became the largest party again in the 2004 election and won two-thirds of the 100 seats in 2008. It won 57 of 102 seats in 2014, the year Domingos Simões Pereira became party president. In the June 2023 election the PAIGC-led coalition Inclusive Alliance Platform – Terra Ranka won a majority with 54 of 102 seats, but according to the Portuguese-language source President Umaro Sissoco Embaló dissolved the assembly that December, and in 2025 the Supreme Court barred the coalition from the legislative election and Simões Pereira from the presidential race. Three days after the vote of 23 November 2025 the military seized power, and Simões Pereira was detained.