The Prime Minister of Cape Verde, Ulisses Correia e Silva, today announced the creation of a joint working group with the Portuguese government to coordinate the exchange of experiences between the two countries’ respective diasporas.
“We have decided to create a joint working group to articulate, coordinate and share the experiences that both countries have in the context of their diaspora, considered a strategic asset for both Cape Verde and Portugal”, announced Ulisses Correia e Silva, after receiving in Praia the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities, Paulo Cafôfo.
“Cape Verde and Portugal have strengthened the necessary consensus for full mobility and to promote greater movement of our citizens in our common space of the CPLP [Community of Portuguese Language Countries]. We are also developing a thorough work aimed at implementing the project of mapping Cape Verdeans and descendants of Cape Verdeans in Portugal,” he added.
According to the Cape Verdean Minister of Communities, Jorge Santos, nearly half a million Cape Verdeans live in Europe, with dual nationality, descendants and from several generations, of which 360 thousand are in Portugal.
“The Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities, Mr. Paulo Cafôfo, expressed to me today the commitment and attention of the Portuguese government to these issues,” said Ulisses Correia e Silva.
The Portuguese Head of Government began his visit to Cape Verde on Wednesday on the island of Santiago with the inauguration of the new facilities of the Common Visa Center in Praia – which is managed by Portugal and issues short-stay visas for the Schengen area on behalf of 19 European countries – and left on Friday for Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente.
Cape Verde will map and count the emigrated community by 2026 to potentiate the attraction of investment and skills to the archipelago, according to a resolution approved by the government at the end of March.
The draft resolution approving the start of the process of mapping the Cape Verdean diaspora for the purpose of compiling official statistics was approved at a meeting of the Council of Ministers on March 28 and presented by the government the following day.
“Cape Verde is a country of strong emigration, and knowing this reality, the government has assumed in its program to give special centrality to the Diaspora. And this centrality is above all from an economic point of view, whether for attracting investments, whether for attracting the skills and qualifications of our diaspora”, announced the Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Cape Verde, Janine Lélis, at a press conference in Praia.
This mapping will be carried out by the National Institute of Statistics of Cape Verde, with the support of the statistical authorities of the countries where the Cape Verdean community resides.
Cape Verde’s population is around 500,000, but the government recently estimated that more than one and a half million Cape Verdeans live in Europe and the United States, and the archipelago’s financial system depends on remittances from these emigrants.
“We have to consider the contribution that the diaspora represents to the gross domestic product itself, that is, to our national economic activity. We also have to look at the value of remittances, which are of great value to our economy. And it is in this context of valorization that we thought of doing this mapping, which will take place until the end of 2026,” said Janine Lélis.
The survey will take into account the entire emigration universe of the archipelago and will start in the countries with the largest Cape Verdean communities, such as the United States, France, Guinea-Bissau, Luxembourg, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe.
“What we want, in fact, is to know better, to know these profiles, to know them in detail, so that policies can be promoted according to this profile, to add even more value to the great contribution that our Diaspora makes to the development process,” concluded the Minister.
