Thirteen Things You Didn’t Know About Cabo Verde

Don’t be embarrassed! If you are like most of our readers, the things you do not know about Cabo Verde include: its very existence, its location off the west coast of Senegal, that it comprises ten islands, of which nine are inhabited, and that it is a former Portuguese colony. Since many of you have asked where in the world Mindelo is, here are a baker’s dozen of other things you probably don’t know about Cabo Verde.

• Portuguese is the official language; Creole is the language everyone speaks. Dialects differ, which has impeded efforts to make it the national language.
• Cabo Verde was uninhabited until the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese discovered it. They built a settlement on Santiago (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), which was the first European settlement in the tropics.
• The islands are volcanic in origin, of different ages and with very different compositions. Fogo has an active volcano, which last erupted in 2014. The caldera from another volcano, once filled with sea water, gives its name to Sal, and also provided a salt industry. One island is mostly desert. Main crops include sugarcane and bananas, and Fogo makes wine. But less than 2% of the land is arable.
• Cabo Verde’s food, like its people, is a fascinating mix of Portuguese and African. Vinho verde, bacalao, and other Portuguese delicacies abound. But so do taro, yuca, manioc, and various kinds of beans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are also Brazilian influences, especially in the ubiquity of capirinhas. Fish and seafood are plentiful and good. (See here for more on the food of Cabo Verde.)

• Mindelo, where we live, boasts Africa’s largest Carnaval celebration. It was amazing!
• Because of its superior harbours, Cabo Verde was a key stopping point in the triangular slave trade across the Atlantic. Roughly twelve million Africans passed through here on their way to the New World.
• Cabo Verde’s population is just over half a million, but it is a diaspora nation: roughly twice as many Cape Verdeans live abroad as at home. More live in or near Cape Cod in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
• Cesária Évora, the barefoot diva, is Cabo Verde’s most famous export. See here for more on the music of Cabo Verde.

• It might seem to be in the middle of nowhere, but Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, Francis Drake, Blackbeard, Cap’n Morgan, and Charles Darwin all passed through Cabo Verde at one point or another.
• Many hurricanes that cross the Atlantic are born here.
• The vast majority of Cabo Verdeans are officially Roman Catholic. As elsewhere in Africa, this does not preclude indigenous forms of worship. There is a small population with Jewish ancestry, from Portugal and Spain but also from North Africa.
• Cabo Verde was part of the African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s. The Marxist Amilcar Cabral worked for its independence from Portugal. He also worked for the independence of Guinea-Bissau; both were achieved in the Carnation Revolution of 1974 (after his assassination in 1973).
• Cabo Verde is quite stable. It has Africa’s highest adult literacy rates (90%) and a GDP in the top 20% of African countries. It ranks high on various health measures compared to the rest of Africa. Also, for a variety of reasons, other Africans sometimes consider it not part of Africa.