Cabo Verde

The islands were uninhabited when Genoese and Portuguese navigators reached them around 1456. Their position on the Atlantic sea lanes made them a base for the slave trade, and the first town, Ribeira Grande — founded on Santiago in 1462 and now called Cidade Velha — became a place where enslaved Africans were held, "seasoned," and shipped onward. Out of the mixing of Portuguese settlers and enslaved Africans grew the Creole society and language that define the country.

Cycles of severe drought and famine, some killing a large share of the population, pushed Cabo Verdeans to emigrate from the nineteenth century onward — first on American whaling ships, later to Portugal, West Africa, and the north-eastern United States. Emigration became a permanent feature of national life.

The islands won independence from Portugal in 1975, briefly linked politically with Guinea-Bissau before going their own way. After a single-party period, Cabo Verde moved peacefully to multiparty democracy in 1991 and has since been rated one of the most stable and democratic countries in Africa, though it remains dependent on imports, tourism, and money sent home by the diaspora.

Cabo Verdean identity is Creole — a blend of Portuguese and West African roots expressed in the language, the food, the Catholicism laced with older practices, and above all the music. Morna, slow and wistful, is the national genre, its lyrics full of sodade, a Creole word for longing and homesickness; the singer Cesária Évora carried it around the world, and UNESCO added it to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2019. Faster styles — coladeira, funaná, and batuque — fill the dance floors.

Emigration shapes the culture as much as the music. There are thought to be more people of Cabo Verdean descent living abroad than in the islands themselves, and returning migrants, remittances, and family split across continents are simply part of ordinary life.

The islands differ sharply from one another — the green, mountainous heights of Santo Antão, Fogo and Santiago against the flat, sandy deserts of Sal, Boa Vista and Maio, with the archipelago itself split into a windward (Barlavento) and a leeward (Sotavento) group — and locals are quick to tell you which island someone is from by their accent and manner. The unofficial national ethos is morabeza, an open, easy-going hospitality.

About half the population lives on Santiago, the largest island, mostly in and around the capital, Praia. São Vicente, with the port city of Mindelo, is the cultural centre; Sal and Boa Vista live off beach tourism; and Santo Antão, Fogo, São Nicolau, and Maio are quieter and more agricultural.

With few natural resources and little arable land, the economy runs on tourism, services, fishing, and remittances, supplemented by construction and a growing push into renewable energy. Water is scarce and often desalinated, and drought still shapes farming on the greener islands.

Life is unhurried, family-centred, and tied to the sea and the diaspora. Sunday Mass, football, the evening stroll, and live music in a bar are the fixed points of the week.

Cabo Verdean cooking makes the most of limited ingredients: maize, beans, cassava, sweet potato, fish, and pork. The national dish is cachupa, a slow-cooked stew of hominy corn, beans, and whatever meat or fish is to hand, often fried up with an egg the next morning as cachupa refogada.

Fresh fish and seafood are excellent — tuna above all, and percebes (goose barnacles), stewed as a speciality of São Vicente — grilled or in a sauce. The pastel, a fried parcel filled with fish or meat, is the classic snack.

Grogue, a fiery sugarcane spirit distilled especially on Santo Antão and Santiago, is the classic local drink, often sweetened with sugarcane molasses or condensed milk into a ponche. Local coffee from Fogo, grown on the volcano's slopes, has a small but serious reputation.

The islands split into beach destinations and hiking destinations. Sal and Boa Vista have long white beaches, warm shallow water, dunes, and world-class conditions for kitesurfing and windsurfing, plus beaches where loggerhead turtles nest, with hatchlings emerging from July to September — Cabo Verde is the species' only major nesting ground in the eastern Atlantic.

Santo Antão is the trekking island: deep green ribeiras, terraced fields clinging to near-vertical slopes, and old cobbled paths between villages, reached by ferry from Mindelo. Fogo is dominated by Pico do Fogo, an active volcano you can climb, rising from a caldera whose floor is farmed for wine and coffee even though eruptions periodically bury the settlements.

On Santiago, Cidade Velha — the first European colonial town in the tropics — has a ruined cathedral, a hilltop fort, and a pillory in its square, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mindelo, on São Vicente, is the place for live morna and the February carnival, the liveliest in the country.