FSince its discovery by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of West Africa has served for much of its history as a hub for the international slave trade, in which Africans were forcibly transported to marketplaces before being distributed across the Americas and Europe.
Now, almost 150 years after the abolition of slavery in Cape Verde and just over 50 years after independence from Portugal, Pedro Fernandes Lopes wants the country to become a beacon for the free movement of human and financial capital across the African diaspora.
Lopes is Cape Verde’s Secretary of State for the Digital Economy and a key figure in its push to become a digital hub for West Africa and beyond, modeled in part on Estonia’s much-lauded digitalization program.
The country had been developing digital governance services for use across Portuguese-speaking Africa for decades when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, tourism numbers briefly collapsed and the government accelerated plans to diversify the economy through technology. In 2021, the Ministry of Digital Economy was created with the aim of the sector generating a quarter of GDP by 2030.
The signs are positive in many respects. The ministry already provides public services to the approximately 529,000 people living on the ten islands of Cape Verde, as well as the vast diaspora, estimated to be three to four times the size of the country’s population. The archipelago’s internet penetration rate is now 75% – twice the African average; School children are taught robotics and programming in shipping containers; and more submarine cables are being laid under the Atlantic.
“The routes that enslaved people were taken from Africa are the same routes that the submarine cables run in the Atlantic, which is crazy,” Lopes said in an interview in his office in the capital Praia, opposite a large mural of prominent Cape Verdean poets painted on a rocky slope. “History repeats itself – but every generation has the opportunity to tell its own story.”
The digital push is central to another goal: reducing Cape Verde’s emigration rate, which is one of the highest in the world relative to its population.
Jessica Sanches Tavares is an advisor to the board of TechParkCV, a £44.78 million technology facility with a startup incubation center, a youth training center and a conference hall.
Tavares, who was born in Cape Verde but moved to France as a baby and lived there most of her life, has wanted to “return” to Cape Verde since she was a child and has finally done so in recent years.
“There is an energy, an ambition, a will to build, and it is really stimulating to be a part of it,” she said. “There are still challenges, but I think we are on the right track.”
Most of the funding for the facility and its smaller campus in the city of Mindelo came as loans from the African Development Bank. In December it will host the Web Summit, one of the world’s largest technology events, taking place on the continent for the first time since its inception in 2009.
Tavares said TechParkCV has so far attracted about two dozen companies looking to benefit from its location in a tax-advantaged special economic zone.
“Companies can develop their activities from Cape Verde and work with customers remotely [worldwide] under certain conditions [that are] technically and economically competitive at the same time,” she said.
“None of this works in a silo. The trained talent can then rely on the data center, settle in the business center or even start their projects through the incubation center.”
Lopes said: “[We] I don’t want to be dependent on foreign aid or support. I think today there is a great opportunity for the global south to no longer be dependent on the former colonizers… We will open the market of Africa to unicorns, but also try to create unicorns of Africa here.”
There are hurdles to progress, most notably poor flight connections to and from destinations within Africa and persistent reports that black Africans – particularly from Nigeria, one of the continent’s largest technology markets – are being targeted for targeted searches at Cape Verde’s airports.
Some within the ecosystem say startups are too reliant on government support. According to reports, up to 100 startup founders will receive funds to cover the salaries of at least six employees, and participation in tech events abroad will also be fully subsidized by the government.
Nevertheless, Lopes expressed optimism: “I’m sure this generation doesn’t want that [only] to come back like their parents did when they retired… If we change the idea of people leaving the country and also tell smart people to go back, things will change. But we can’t just have the narrative. You have to walk the talk. And that’s exactly what we’re doing now.”
