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
African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde union finally broke down in 1980 following the military coup led by João Bernardo Vieira against the Cape Verdean Cabral. The Cape Verdean branch of PAIGC was subsequently converted into a separate party, the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Under Vieira, the party continued to govern the country in the 1980s and 1990s. One-party elections were held in 1984 and 1989, and Vieira was re-elected as PAIGC Secretary-General at the party's fourth congress in November 1986. Following the introduction of multi-party politics in May 1991, the first multi-party elections were held in 1994. The general elections