Cape Verde–Guinea-Bissau relations Portuguese Cape Verde supplied many colonial officials for the mainland Portuguese Guinea, later Guinea-Bissau, at one point making up three-quarters of the civil service. Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau campaigned together for independence from Portugal, chiefly led by Amílcar Cabral's Marxist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde from 1956. Cape Verde provided the bourgeoisie that led the anti-colonial movement in Portuguese Guinea. An ideology of unity was key to Cabral's theory of African liberation, and Cabral was himself Cape Verdean Guinea-Bissauan, though the call for unity was partly a tactic to avoid Guinea-Bissau becoming independent without Cape
History of Cape Verde 1956, Amílcar and Luís Cabral founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.) Although the Cape Verdeans were treated badly by their colonial masters, Portuguese treatment of Cape Verdeans was distinct from their treatment of other colonized regions, and the people of Cape Verde fared slightly better than Africans in other Portuguese colonies because of their lighter skin. A small minority received an education and Cape Verde was the first African-Portuguese colony to have a school for higher education. By the time of independence, a quarter of the population could read, compared to 5% in Portuguese