Army generals in Guinea-Bissau seized power on Nov. 26, 2025 – the eve of a scheduled official declaration of the winner in the West African nation’s presidential election.

Alleging a destabilization plot by unnamed politicians and drug lords, the military suspended the electoral process and blocked the results of a contest that both the now former president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, and the opposition candidate had claimed victory in.

General Horta Inta-a, the head of the presidential guard, was subsequently sworn in as “transitional” leader and Ilídio Vieira Té, a close Embaló ally, was appointed prime minister. The timing of the development and Embaló’s connection to the new government figures have led domestic opposition groups and some West African political leaders to claim the coup was staged to facilitate Embaló’s continued rule by proxy.

Whatever the veracity of such claims, the events point to both a deepening regional crisis of democracy and the inability of Guinea-Bissau to escape its coup-prone history. Indeed, as a scholar who has compiled and updated a dataset of coup types and documented their history in Guinea-Bissau since its independence from Portugal in 1974, I believe the country is caught in a classic coup trap whereby poverty and coups d’etat are mutually reinforcing.

The events in Guinea-Bissau reflect a so-called polycrisis for countries in and around the Sahel belt, sandwiched between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. This region has, since 2020, become the global epicenter of both terrorism and........

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