Editing Economy of Guinea-Bissau (section)

===As an overseas province===
In 1951, when the Portuguese government overhauled the entire colonial system, all Portugal's colonies, including Portuguese Guinea, were renamed Overseas Provinces (''Províncias Ultramarinas''). New infrastructures were built for education, health, agriculture, transportation, commerce, services, and administration.

[[Cashew]], [[peanut]], [[rice]], [[timber]], [[livestock]] and fish were the main economic productions. The port of Bissau was one of the main employers and a very important source of taxes for the province's authorities.

====Independence war====
The fight for independence began in 1956, when [[Amílcar Cabral]] founded the ''[[Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde]]'' ({{langx|pt|African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde}}), the PAIGC. In 1961, when a purely political campaign for independence had made predictably little progress, the PAIGC adopted [[guerrilla]] tactics. Although heavily outnumbered by Portuguese troops (approximately 30,000 Portuguese to some 10,000 guerrillas), the PAIGe had the great advantage of safe havens over the border in [[Senegal]] and [[Guinea]], both recently independent of French rule.

Several communist countries supported the guerrillas with weapons and military training. The conflict in [[Portuguese Guinea]] involving the PAIGC guerrillas and the [[Portuguese Army]] was the most intense and damaging of all [[Portuguese Colonial War]]. Thus, during the 1960s and early 1970s, Portuguese development plans promoting strong economic growth and effective socioeconomic policies, like those applied by the Portuguese in the other two theaters of war ([[Portuguese Angola]] and [[Portuguese Mozambique]]), were not possible. In 1972 Cabral set up a government in exile in [[Conakry]], the capital of neighbouring [[Guinea]]. It was there, in 1973, that he was assassinated outside his house - just a year before a [[Carnation Revolution|left-wing military coup in Portugal]] dramatically altered the political situation.

By 1973 the PAIGC controlled most of the interior of the country, while the coastal and estuary towns, including the main population and economic centres, remained under Portuguese control. The village of [[Madina do Boé]] in the southeasternmost area of the territory, close to the border with neighbouring [[Guinea]], was the location where PAIGC guerrillas declared the independence of Guinea-Bissau on September 24, 1973. The war in the colonies was increasingly unpopular in Portugal itself, as the people got weary of war and balked at its ever-rising expense. Following the [[Carnation Revolution|coup d'état in Portugal in 1974]], the new [[Movimento das Forças Armadas|left-wing revolutionary government of Portugal]] began to negotiate with the PAIGC and decided to offer independence to all the overseas territories.