Guinea-Bissau document photos online

Guinea-Bissau is the document world's great contrarian: on 24 September 1973 its liberation movement simply declared the nation independent, and Portugal only signed off nearly a year later, on 10 September 1974. Founding hero Amilcar Cabral never saw it happen, having been assassinated that January. Stranger still is the country's money. Alone among the eight nations sharing the West African CFA franc, Guinea-Bissau is the only former Portuguese colony in the club, switching to the euro-pegged franc in 1997 after its own peso collapsed under runaway inflation. And for many farmers, the truest currency isn't paper at all but the cashew nut.

• Independence Guinea-Bissau unilaterally proclaimed independence on 24 September 1973, but Portugal did not formally recognize it until 10 September 1974, making the new state older than the colonial power's acknowledgment of it.
• Passport power As of 2026 the Guinea-Bissau passport ranks 82nd on the Henley Passport Index, opening just 50 destinations visa-free or on arrival, including Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines.
• Currency Guinea-Bissau is the only former Portuguese colony to use the West African CFA franc, adopting the euro-pegged currency (fixed at 655.957 to the euro) in 1997 to escape hyperinflation.
• Old money The franc replaced the Guinea-Bissau peso at a punishing 65 pesos per franc, after the peso had decayed to roughly 225 pesos per Portuguese escudo by 1996; its banknotes pictured national hero Amilcar Cabral.
• Cashew cash Cashew nuts make up roughly 85-90% of Guinea-Bissau's exports, and rural families have long bartered them directly for imported rice, a swap that has slid from 1:1 to about 3kg of cashews for 1kg of rice.
• Language Though Portuguese is the official language used on documents, only about 2% of people speak it as a first language, while around 54% speak Guinea-Bissau Creole (Kriol).
• Founding name The country borrows its capital's name to set itself apart, calling itself Guinea-Bissau precisely to avoid confusion with neighbouring Guinea, after the seaside capital of Bissau.
• Island nation Off its coast lies the Bijagos Archipelago, a UNESCO biosphere reserve of 88 islands of which only around 20 are permanently inhabited, and the only active deltaic archipelago on Africa's Atlantic coast.
• Record crop Despite being a tiny nation, Guinea-Bissau ranked as the world's eighth-largest cashew producer, harvesting about 122,283 tonnes in 2021.