Domestic Politics

On 8 January 2020, Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva reshuffled his government by replacing the minister of tourism and transport and of the maritime economy, José da Silva Gonçalves, who had requested his own dismissal for personal reasons. Paulo Veiga, hitherto secretary of state for maritime economy, took over the maritime economy portfolio while Carlos Jorge Santos, previously local administrator of the Portuguese Oásis Atlântico hotel group, was appointed minister of tourism and transport. In addition, Rui Figueiredo Soares, since 2016 the MpD’s parliamentary leader in the national assembly, was appointed deputy minister to the prime minister and minister of regional integration.

On 9 February, Correia e Silva was re-elected unopposed as leader of the MpD, a post he had occupied since 2013, by 99% of the votes cast in direct party elections. Only 58.4% of the registered 31,541 party members participated in the voting, less than the 65% turnout in the previous MpD leadership elections in 2017. At the MpD’s 12th national convention in Praia on 6–7 March, Filomena Delgado, a former minister of education, was elected secretary-general by the 300 participating delegates. In his opening address, Correia e Silva claimed that with the political results of governance achieved in the current legislature, his party was committed to rule at least until 2026.

In response to the pandemic, on 10 March the government approved a National Contingency Plan for the Prevention and Control of Covid-19. Eight days later, Cabo Verde Airlines suspended all of its operations, flights to a few international destinations having already been interrupted since 27 February. On 20 March, the national health authorities reported the first case of coronavirus infection, in Boa Vista. Three days later, this person became the country’s first Covid-19 fatality. On 2 April, President Jorge Fonseca declared a nationwide state of emergency to contain the coronavirus outbreak. On 27 April, the emergency was lifted in six islands without cases of infections, but maintained in São Vicente until 3 May, in Boa Vista until 14 May, and in Santiago until 29 May. On 1 March, the government decreed a moratorium until 31 December on all credit payments to ease the financial hardships caused by the pandemic. On 30 July, the national assembly approved a revised budget of 75 bn escudos (cve; equivalent to € 680.1 m), with revenue of cve 871 m (€ 7.9 m) – 13% less than in the initial budget due to the crisis. On 12 October, the government reopened the country’s international airports and sea ports. Between 20 March and 31 December, the local health authorities reported 11,793 Covid-19 cases and 112 deaths.

On 12 June, the Colombian businessman Alex Saab, special envoy of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, was detained by the local authorities during a refuelling stop-over at Sal airport in a San Marino-registered private jet on a business trip on behalf of the Venezuelan government to Iran, due to an international arrest warrant issued by the USA. The US authorities, who have no extradition treaty with Cabo Verde, accused Saab of money laundering of $ 350 m in US banks to maintain Maduro’s underground financial network and with intent to undermine US-imposed sanctions, and demanded his extradition to have him tried in a US court. The Maduro government claimed that Saab’s alleged diplomatic immunity rendered his detention illegal and demanded his immediate release. On 31 July, the court of appeal in Mindelo decided in favour of Saab’s extradition to the USA, whereupon his international defence team, including the widely known Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzón, lodged an appeal with the supreme court. On 19 October, the latter decided to return the case for review to the court of appeal in Mindelo. On 30 November, the ecowas Court of Justice in Abuja ordered the Cabo Verdean authorities to transfer Saab from prison to house arrest while awaiting the court verdict. However, Cabo Verde did not comply with the order, as it repudiated the court’s jurisdiction. In an attempt to grant Saab diplomatic status, on 24 December Venezuela’s government appointed him as its deputy permanent representative to the au in Addis Ababa.

In the local elections held on 25 October, surprisingly, the ruling MpD lost the capital Praia to the opposition paicv. Altogether the MpD won 14 municipalities, while the paicv captured the remaining eight, six more than in 2016. In addition to Praia, the MpD lost another four of the 18 municipalities won in 2016 to the paicv (Ribeira Grande, São Domingos, Tarrafal de Santiago, and São Filipe) but captured a new one (Ribeira Brava), held by independents since 2016. In addition to the five municipalities taken from the MpD, the paicv also won in Boa Vista, hitherto ruled by independents. The voter turnout was 52.2%, despite the pandemic only the third lowest in the country’s history.

Foreign Affairs

The pandemic significantly reduced diplomatic travelling to and from the archipelago. On 10 February, health minister Arlindo do Rosário received the local Chinese ambassador Du Xiaocong to discuss the evolution of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in China in general and Wuhan in particular, where 13 Cabo Verdean students were staying. Another issue on the meeting’s agenda was the safe return of Cabo Verdean students from other provinces and that of Chinese residents in the archipelago, who had spent the Chinese New Year at home. On behalf of the government, Rosário recognised the Chinese authorities’ enormous efforts to contain the spread of the disease. On 12 March, foreign and defence minister Luís Filipe Tavares and Ambassador Du Xiaocong signed an agreement on the concession of Chinese military assistance worth $ 5 m for five years, including the supply of military hardware and training.

On 17 February, Tavares received Luxembourg’s ministers of economy, cooperation, and humanitarian affairs, Franz Fayot; of environment, climate, and sustainable development, Carole Dieschbourg; and of energy and spatial planning, Claude Turmes. The local delegation comprised the ministers of agriculture and environment, Gilberto Silva, and of industry, trade, and energy, Alexandre Monteiro; and the national director of political, economic, and cultural affairs, Ambassador Júlio Morais. The two delegations discussed Luxembourg’s 5th Indicative Cooperation Programme (pic) for Cabo Verde for the period 2021–25. On 26 June, finance minister Olavo Correia signed agreements worth € 1.63 m with Luxembourg’s chargé d’affaires in Praia, Angèle da Cruz, on financial aid for the fight against the pandemic, including € 495,000 to finance the deployment of a 33-member Cuban medical team in the archipelago. On 9 July, ministers Tavares and Fayot, via videoconference, signed the pic Development, Climate and Energy (2021–25) worth € 78 m.

On 30 April in Moscow, Tavares and Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov signed a bilateral agreement on mutual visa waivers between the two countries. On 28 June, the minister of tourism and transport, Carlos Santos, received the local Russian ambassador Vladimir Sokolenko to discuss a new bilateral agreement on aviation and the promotion of Cabo Verde as a tourist destination, as well as the possibility of Russian private investments in the archipelago’s tourism and transport sectors.

On 3 August, Guinea-Bissau opened an embassy in Praia, where hitherto it had only had a general consulate. During the inauguration ceremony, Fernando Elísio Freire, the minister of state, declared that in turn Cabo Verde would soon open its embassy in Bissau. He said that it was necessary for the two countries to strengthen their bilateral relations because in addition to a common official language, historical ties, and common interests, they both belonged to the same inter-state organisations, namely ecowas, au, and cplp. Finally, on 16 December, Correia e Silva announced the inauguration of his country’s first embassy in Bissau for early 2021. He said the embassy would also provide services to the 40,000 Cabo Verdean migrants and their descendants living in Guinea-Bissau.

Socioeconomic Developments

On 3 January, the state acquired 27.44% of the shares in Caixa Económica de Cabo Verde (cecv), owned by the Macau-based GeoCapital before 2018. The central bank, Banco de Cabo Verde, had initially approved the acquisition of the stake by International Holding Cabo Verde (ihcv), but in 2019 disagreements with the government regarding cecv’s future prompted the withdrawal of that investor. Finance minister Olavo Correia declared that the government’s objective with the deal was to guarantee both the bank’s shareholder stability and the stability of the national financial system. He said that the government retained its right and interest to sell the stake to a sound and experienced private investor. The Instituto Nacional de Previdência Social remained the cecv’s major stakeholder with 47.21% of shares, while the other stakeholders were Correios de Cabo Verde, with 15.14%, and private investors and employees, who held 10.21% of the shares.

On 21 February, the stock exchange Bolsa de Valores de Cabo Verde announced that the sale of 7.65% of the shares in Cabo Verde Airlines (cva) to 44 investors from the migrant communities in the US and 13 other countries had generated cve 108,765,050 (€ 986,216) for the state. On 22 March, Correia e Silva declared that the scheduled sale of the remaining 39% of cva owned by the state to institutional investors would be delayed, since, due to the crisis, the airline was expected to become a recipient of economic support. On 27 July, the government approved a guarantee for a loan from the International Investment Bank (iib) amounting to € 10.2 m for cva. On 31 July, finance minister Olavo Correia affirmed that without state intervention the airline would disappear, but guaranteed that the government’s support would be proportional to the size of the state’s stake in the company. On 3 November, the government guaranteed another loan of cve 218 m (ca. € 2 m) from iib for cva to pay the salaries of its 300 employees in arrears and delayed debt service payments. The same day, the executive authorised another guarantee for an emergency loan of cve 100 m (€ 906,865) from cecv for cva – also to pay salaries in arrears.

On 29 May, in litigation between Unitel T+ and cv Telecom over access to the terminal of the submarine cable of the West Africa Cable System (wacs) in Praia, the regulator Agência Reguladora Multissectorial da Economia’ (arme) decided in favour of the former. cv Telecom had tried to deny Unitel T+ access to the wacs, arguing that the company, owned by Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, daughter of former Angolan president Eduardo do Santos, did not belong to the consortium of investors of the wacs. cv Telecom rejected the verdict and announced its intention to appeal at court.

On 8 June, the national assembly adopted the law on the Zona Económica Marí­tima in São Vicente (zeemsv), which created a special regime for the organisation, development, and functioning of an integrated economic zone of sea-related enterprises and services in São Vicente and the neighbouring islands of Santo Antão, São Nicolau, and Santa Luzia. By 2035, the zeemsv, whose viability study had been supported by China, was expected to become a regional maritime logistics platform for the transhipment of cargo and containers and the processing, marketing, and distribution of products from the sea, and a prestigious international tourist destination. Under the law, parties making private investments of above € 2.5 m were entitled to receive special incentives from the state, depending on the amount invested, socioeconomic impact, job creation, and relevance to the implementation of the free trade zone.

On 15 December, finance minister Correia signed an agreement with the Spanish real estate businessman Enrique Bañuelos de Castro, the representative of ihcv in Praia, on the implementation of the tourism project Little África Maio. The project, aimed at the touristic development of Maio Island with an extension to neighbouring Santiago, was for an estimated € 500 m, the biggest private investment ever made in Cabo Verde. The project, which included the construction of the country’s fifth international airport in Maio, was expected to create more than 2,000 direct local jobs during the three-phase construction period and more than 4,000 jobs after its complete implementation. The government classified the investment as of enormous national interest in the context of the national development strategy.

As expected, the pandemic severely hit the important tourism sector, which represents about 25% of Cabo Verde’s gdp. The number of foreign tourists dropped by 74.7%, from 819,308 in 2019 to 207,125, of whom 189,110 arrived in the first quarter of the year. Hotel accommodation was preferred by 87.4% of the tourists, while hostels, guest houses, and tourist villages were chosen by 4.9%, 4.3%, and 2.2% of the visitors respectively. As in previous years, Sal Island was the major destination with 40.2% of tourists, while Boa Vista and Santiago followed with 28.1% and 16.0% of the total, respectively. The UK was again the main country of origin with 19.4% of all tourists, followed by Cabo Verde (12.4%), France (11.8%), Germany (11.0%), Netherlands/Belgium (10.3%), Portugal (6.3%), and Italy (2.3%).