In Guinea-Bissau, the ruling junta has just cleared a decisive step on its declared path back to civilian rule. On Sunday 30 August 2026, voters went to the polls to answer yes or no on whether to bring into force a new constitution, adopted unanimously in January by the National Transitional Council, the legislative body set up by the military. On Tuesday 1 September, the National Elections Commission confirmed a victory for the yes vote, with turnout estimated at more than 55 percent of registered voters, in a poll that electoral authorities described as having passed without serious incident.
The referendum comes against a deeply troubled political backdrop. Less than ten months earlier, on 26 November 2025, General Horta N’Tam, then army chief of staff, overthrew President Umaro Sissoco Embaló under decidedly unusual circumstances: the coup unfolded even as the National Electoral Commission was still counting the votes from the country’s latest presidential election. In the aftermath, the military destroyed ballot papers and jailed several opposition leaders. It was the fifth coup this small West African nation has experienced since 1980, a figure that alone sums up its turbulent political history.
On substance, the approved text marks a major institutional shift: Guinea-Bissau moves from a semi-parliamentary system, where power was shared between the president and a prime minister drawn from the parliamentary majority, to a strong presidential regime. The head of state will now be able to appoint the prime minister and cabinet members directly, and will hold considerably expanded executive powers, including the ability to dissolve parliament. The number of lawmakers, meanwhile, will shrink from 102 to 65, a change that mechanically weakens the legislature’s counterweight to the executive.
Transitional authorities have presented the reform as a structural remedy to the country’s chronic instability, arguing that difficult power-sharing arrangements between presidents and hostile parliaments, such as the one that led President Embaló to dissolve the National Assembly in December 2023, had fed institutional crises year after year. Opposition parties see it very differently: as an attempt to use the ballot box to legitimise a hyper-presidential system born of a coup, and had called for a boycott of the vote.
Guinea-Bissau is not an isolated case on the continent. It joins an already long list of African countries that have, in recent years, amended or revised their constitutions to extend presidential terms, remove age limits, or strengthen executive power, following the path of Zimbabwe, Guinea, Togo, Uganda and Chad.
The adoption of this new constitution now clears the way for the presidential and legislative election scheduled for 6 December 2026, a vote meant to mark the country’s return to fully civilian rule. It will, however, take place under profoundly reshaped institutional rules, with whoever wins the presidency inheriting notably broader powers than their predecessor, a factor certain to weigh on the political balance of power ahead.