Flag of Guinea-Bissau

What the flag of Guinea-Bissau looks like

The flag of Guinea-Bissau has a vertical red band along the hoist, taking up about a third of the width. A black five-pointed star stands in the center of the red band. The rest of the flag is split into two equal horizontal stripes: yellow on top and green below. The proportions are 1:2.

The red, yellow, green and black are the Pan-African colors, and they appear in many African flags. The Guinea-Bissau flag emoji shows the design clearly even at a small size.

Guinea-Bissau flag meaning and symbolism

Red is generally explained as the blood shed in the struggle for independence. Yellow is linked to the sun, the harvest and the country's mineral wealth. Green stands for forests, hope and agriculture. The black star is a symbol of African unity and of the Black people's liberation, following the example of Ghana's black star. The Pan-African colors came from Ethiopia, the oldest independent state in Africa, and later spread across the continent. These readings are the traditional ones.

History of the Guinea-Bissau flag

The country was the colony of Portuguese Guinea. In 1956 Amílcar Cabral and others founded the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), which began an armed struggle in 1963. The party's flag, with its red, yellow, green and black star, became the flag of the independence movement. Independence was declared in the liberated areas on 24 September 1973, and the flag was adopted at that point. Portugal recognized the new state in September 1974.

When Cape Verde became independent in 1975, it first used a flag based on the PAIGC design, since the party had planned a union of the two countries. After a coup in Guinea-Bissau in 1980, the plan was dropped, and Cape Verde changed its flag in 1992. Guinea-Bissau has kept the original design.