Portuguese-speaking African countries postcolonial discourse that attempts to explain the development of the modern nation-state in Lusophone Africa and shed light on its failures. Portuguese-speaking African countries The Portuguese-speaking African countries (also referred to as Lusophone Africa) consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and, since 2011, Equatorial Guinea. The six countries are former colonies of the Portuguese Empire. From 1778 until independence, Equatorial Guinea was also a colony of the Spanish Empire. In 1992, the five Lusophone African countries formed an interstate organisation called PALOP, a
Colonial empire the Navigator, John II and Manuel I. The empire spread throughout a vast number of territories distributed across the globe (especially at one time in the 16th century) that are now parts of 60 different sovereign states. Portugal would eventually control Brazil, territories such as what is now Uruguay and some North American fishing ports, in the Americas; Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe (among other territories and bases) in the North and the Subsaharan Africa; cities, forts or territories in all the Asian Subcontinents, as Muscat, Ormus and Bahrain (amongst other bases) in the