Cabo Verde
Cabo Verde: 519 years of Portuguese rule created a diaspora 3-4x the resident population. Remittances at 12-15% of GDP, tourism 25%. By 2026: blue economy diversification or dependency trap.
Cabo Verde exists because these islands were uninhabited—and because more Cape Verdeans now live abroad than at home. When Portuguese explorers arrived in 1456, they found ten volcanic islands with no indigenous population. By 1462, Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha) became the first permanent European settlement in the tropics, and soon after, the islands became a pivot in the Atlantic slave trade. Unlike most African colonies, Cape Verde's entire population descended from Portuguese settlers and enslaved Africans brought to work the plantations.
Portugal held these islands for 519 years—the longest European colonization in Africa. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral, a Cape Verdean agronomist, founded the PAIGC liberation movement with Guinea-Bissau. In 1973, Portuguese secret services engineered his assassination. The Carnation Revolution toppled Portugal's dictatorship in 1974, and independence came on July 5, 1975. After a military coup in Guinea-Bissau in 1980, plans for unification collapsed, and Cape Verde charted its own course.
That course led to remarkable institutional success. Since multiparty democracy arrived in 1991, Cape Verde has become one of Africa's most stable and democratic nations. But the economy reveals a structural paradox: for every Cape Verdean living on the islands (around 550,000), there are 3 to 4 living abroad—an estimated 1.5 to 2 million in the diaspora, concentrated in the United States, Portugal, and France.
This diaspora isn't a loss; it's the economic model. Remittances account for 12-15% of GDP—among the highest ratios in Sub-Saharan Africa—and reached record highs in 2024. Tourism generates 25% of GDP and 40% of jobs. Together, services and diaspora money finance an import-dependent economy that produces little it consumes. GDP grew 7.3% in 2024, debt fell from 144% to 107.7% of GDP, and foreign reserves cover seven months of imports.
By 2026, the question is whether Cape Verde can diversify into the blue economy—fisheries, renewable energy, maritime services—before climate change and eurozone downturns expose how fragile a diaspora-dependent model truly is.