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Millennium Development Goals in Guinea-Bissau

Despite recent improvement in a number of areas, the pace of post-conflict rehabilitation in Guinea-Bissau looks to fall short of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Indeed the country remains close to the very bottom of the UN Human Development Index. The civil war that ended in 1999 caused a 28% drop in GDP in that year alone, and subsequent chronic political instability alongside a fracturing of civil society have severely limited the progress of successive governments in improving citizens' lives.

Crumbling infrastructure, Bairro Cintra Nema, Bissau © Tom Shaw

Major problems identified by the National Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (NPRSP) published in July 2006 are the reforming of public administration, delivering basic services and encouraging private investment. The NPRSP supersedes the previous long term strategy paper, Guiné-Bissau 2025 – Djitu Ten (‘there is a way’), drawn up in 1996, whose aims have been met with little political action.

The MDGs 2 and 3 pose particularly difficult benchmarks for Guinea-Bissau, owing to a permanent crisis within the public sector. The state is rarely able to pay its public service employees to achieve even a minimum functioning, meaning that schools are routinely disrupted or non-operational for months at a time. Whilst school enrolment has improved in recent years, rates are still low (46% of girls and 75% of boys), particularly in the south and east. Sadly, 10% of rural schools in Guinea-Bissau only have a first grade, and 23% offer only first and second year education. It is not surprising therefore that illiteracy rates in the country are estimated at 50% of men and 83% of women – significantly higher than the regional average.

By and large, poverty is characterised as a predominantly rural phenomenon in Guinea-Bissau, with 85% of people below the poverty line living in the interior. Interestingly, Guinea-Bissau’s NPRSP identifies female headed households to be less at risk of extreme poverty than households headed by men, owing to the opportunities open to women in the country’s vast informal economy, and the widespread practice of polygamy.

Health and HIV/AIDS in Guinea-Bissau

Access to health services in Guinea-Bissau is very poor. 70% of the country’s doctors are resident in the capital providing coverage for only 41% of the population. Malaria is the leading cause of death, accounting for 35% of deaths, though HIV/AIDS is also a major health problem. The prevalence rate in 2002 was 3.8% but has more recently been estimated to be as high as 14% - the world’s 11th highest infection rate. Access to anti-retroviral (ARV) medicines for children with HIV/AIDS became a reality in 2006, and programmes focusing on awareness-raising are now also in place.

Maternal and infant mortality rates (91 and 130 per 1000 births respectively) reflect very limited access to healthcare and together with overall life expectancy are significantly worse than the sub-Saharan Africa average. Almost 40% of the population is undernourished, typically as a result of crop failure, and cholera outbreaks in the poorer neighbourhoods of Bissau are becoming more common.
The Economy in Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau depends on cashew nuts © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

Guinea-Bissau’s economy relies almost solely on a single cash crop - cashew nuts – which are sold to a single country, India, the monopsony buyer. Only the nuts are exported for processing abroad, with the fruit often going to waste, due to lack of foreign investment and weak infrastructure. The centrality of the cashew crop to most Guinean livelihoods makes many people vulnerable both to the government’s price setting for the commodity and unfair returns from traders.

Though the country is a major rice producer, the focus on cashew production and regular damage from salt water inundation have recently led to major food shortages, and resulted in a famine warning for the Tombali region in 2006. Contrary to global trends, agriculture has grown in importance to the economy in recent decades, but the country remains a net importer of food (most significantly of cheap rice from the USA and Southeast Asia). The country’s unadjusted GDP of $160 per capita is far below the sub-Saharan African average of $513.

Guinea-Bissau coastline vulnerable to narcotics trade © Tom Shaw

After Nicaragua and São Tomé e Principe, Guinea-Bissau is the world’s most aid-dependent country, with 90% of the public budget being funded by external assistance. The country was provisionally approved for the HIPC debt relief initiative in 1997, but persistent instability has delayed fulfilment of the corresponding structural adjustment requirements. Furthermore, the introduction of austerity measures under the structural adjustment conditions of the international financial institutions have left people with few means to survive other than through informal trade, which has boomed in the last two decades. Guinea-Bissau is extremely isolated from global capital, so that lumos - rotating markets organised by the people - and cross border trade are essential to the livelihoods of most Guineans outside the capital.
Politics in Guinea-Bissau

The political history of Guinea-Bissau is tied closely to that of Cape Verde, with whom Guineans share the kriolo language. Modern Guinea-Bissau has inherited a legacy of state socialism (1974-1994) under The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), whose popularity stems from having liberated their country from Portugal in 1974. Its status as the country’s sole legitimate party was reversed by parliament only in 1990.

João Bernado Vieira (‘Nino’), a popular and iconic figure in Guinea-Bissau, was president between 1980 and 1998, and again from 2005 to the present day, winning the country’s democratic elections in 1994 and 2005. In the interim, the country was ruled by Koumba Yala, whose three year rule both started and ended with military coups. Corruption and mismanagement under Yala resulted in a souring of international relations and the suspension of much external assistance.

Politics is polarised along party and personality lines, particularly between the president , the military, and his former party, the PAIGC. In March 2007 parliament won a vote of no confidence in the government of Aristides Gomes, the president's unpopular choice as prime minister. Martinho Ndafa Cabi, leader of the main opposition PAIGC party, has now formed a new government, promising greater priority to national unity.

The United Nations runs a Peacebuilding Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS), whose mandate has recently been extended to continue support for the country’s transition to constitutional rule. On the other hand, a significant number of foreign embassies and INGO missions left Guinea-Bissau at the beginning of the civil war, and have not yet returned. Whilst the country was formerly very adept at attracting international aid, donors have in recent years been turning their backs on Guinea-Bissau, citing lack of co-operation and credible governance.

Civil society has long been thought of as strong in the sense of inter-ethnic solidarity and traditional mutual support systems, although its influence has only recently become more visible on a more organised, political level. In fact, the majority of the populace of the interior remain politically rather detached, as has been the case since colonial and state-socialist rule.
Conflict in Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau experienced West Africa’s only armed liberation struggle between 1963-1974, which ironically contributed to Portugal’s own liberation from dictatorship in 1974. Since then, fragile peace in Guinea-Bissau has very much depended on regional stability. The separatist guerrilla movement in the neighbouring Casamance region of Senegal has been the source for numerous outbreaks of violence in Guinea-Bissau, most recently in 2006, when the Guinean army invaded Casamance in search of the rebel leader. Violent clashes and the laying of new landmines resulted in a number of deaths and much internal displacement in the northern Cacheu region.

Reminder of civil war in Bissau © Tom Shaw

The spark that ignited the civil war of 1998-9 came from Guinea-Bissau’s involvement in the Casamance conflict. The ethnic Balanta faction of the army, who have historically opposed Nino’s government, responded with force to the sacking of an Army Commander over the issue and the country was plunged into a brief but bitter civil conflict. Almost the entire population of the capital, Bissau, fled during the fighting, which left hundreds of thousands of people displaced internally and in neighbouring Senegal and Guinea (Conakry). Coinciding with the agricultural lean season, the consequence was major disease and thousands of deaths.

Following the conflict, many Guineans have been worried by minor, but growing, ethnic tension, mirroring increasingly antagonistic and mistrustful relations within government. A security strategy was completed in October 2006, outlining plans to downsize and retrain the armed forces in order to reduce their destabilising influence on a fledgling democracy, as military spending amounts for around one third of the national budget. The re-integration of ex-combatants and reconstruction of civil institutions remain major concerns for the country, as is the welfare of a significant number of Senegalese, Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees.

One of the biggest threats to peace and stability in the country is the dramatic upsurge of drug trafficking activity from Latin America, which has prompted fears that Guinea-Bissau will soon become Africa’s first ‘narco-state’. Such is the potentially serious destabilising influence of the narcotics trade, not only on Guinea-Bissau but the West African region as a whole, that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has expressed grave concern over the situation.
Human Rights in Guinea-Bissau

Suggestions by local journalists that government figures might be involved in this narcotics trading led to threats against them. The president of Guinea-Bissau has subsequently been criticised by international agencies for oppressing freedom of speech. Recent events are reminiscent of a similar crack-down under president Yala, when the Portuguese agency RTP was banned from broadcasting in the country.

Another major concern is the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). A law banning the practice was recently proposed but has yet to be passed by parliament.
The Environment in Guinea-Bissau

Cashew harvest time in the Bijagos Islands © Tom Shaw

Guinea-Bissau’s unique Bijagós Islands are a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site and are home to rare wildlife such has salt-water hippos and tarpon fish. Unfortunately, pressures from increasing narco-trading activities in the islands and oil prospecting interests make reviving specialist tourism difficult. On the other hand the government is making progress in establishing national parks to protect wildlife and virgin rainforest in the south of the country.

Extreme climatic events such as flooding and salt water inundation appear to be occurring with greater frequency, with serious implications for food security in the country, where most rice is grown on coastal floodplains. Due to very limited economic development in the country, environmental degradation has been limited, though without proper measures in place this could change in the future.



Tom Shaw holds a Masters in International Development Studies from Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands. He undertook a research internship in Guinea-Bissau with SNV on a microfinance theme, and currently works in local government in the UK.

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