Liberation in focus: Rare Guinea-Bissau photos added to NAI Library online archive
A unique collection of creative commons licensed photographs from Guinea-Bissau has been added to the NAI Library’s online archive of African liberation struggles, opening a new window onto a crucial period of decolonisation.
The Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) has long been a focal point for Nordic interest and engagement in Africa, including during the height of the liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. This period of engagement with the African liberation movements resulted in a great deal of printed and audio-visual materials finding their way to Sweden.
Much of this material is today housed in the NAI Library’s Liberation Africa collection and includes photos, videos, documents and more than 100 interviews from Southern Africa (some available online), all catalogued in detail for ease of access.
Liberated Guinea-Bissau
In November 1970, a Swedish delegation – which included a young Social Democrat politician, Birgitta Dahl, who later became speaker of the Swedish Parliament – visited liberated areas of Guinea-Bissau. The delegation met revolutionary leader Amílcar Cabral at a pivotal moment in the struggle for independence, when up to half the country was still under Portuguese colonial rule.
The visit was documented by Norwegian photographer Knut Andreassen in a collection of black and white photographs that vividly capture everyday life in the liberated zones. The images show people working in the fields and attending health centres, soldiers posing with weapons, and children learning to read at recently established schools, which were instrumental in raising literacy levels in the newly emerging country.
On his return, Andreassen organised an exhibition to inform people in the Nordic countries about Cabral’s African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Copies of his photos were later donated to NAI by his widow and also to the Amílcar Cabral Foundation in Cape Verde.
Filling a gap
“These photos fill a gap in the documentation of the era”, explains Åsa Lund Moberg, head of the NAI Library, who regularly sees researchers and filmmakers express an interest in shedding more light on the period.
“Until now, only a small number of the photos were available online. We could not publish more due to copyright issues, but even so we still received several requests for access to them each year.”
In 2025, archival research by NAI librarian Kalle Laajala — including searches on a genealogy website to locate Andreassen’s children — resulted in an agreement to publish more than 200 additional photographs under a creative commons licence, which allows for free use.
Each item in the collection is described in detail and housed in the NAI Library’s Liberation Africa online reference source. The resource captures the work of the late researcher Tor Sellström, who headed an NAI documentation project, National Liberation in Southern Africa: The Role of the Nordic Countries, which culminated in two books describing the period, published in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
Åsa Lund Moberg, Head of the NAI Library
Solidarity with liberation struggles
Support in Sweden and the wider Nordics for anti-colonial uprisings stood in stark contrast to the stance of many Western countries, both in terms of official ties to liberation movements – whose members were often labelled as communists or terrorists elsewhere – and high levels of popular engagement. In 1969, the Swedish Parliament endorsed a policy of direct assistance to liberation movements in Southern Africa.
“In the 60s and 70s, many people came to NAI for meetings and conferences to learn more about Africa. It was a focal point for people travelling out”, explains Lund Moberg.
“And when they returned from trips, they often donated printed material to the library”, she adds, noting that donations from people retiring or clearing out offices continue to this day, although less frequently than before.
TEXT: Tom Sullivan