Cape Verde’s transformation agenda is anchored on the development of key economic clusters. Among the clusters is finance. This is a critical cluster given the important of financing for the development of the other clusters and the important contributions it can make, as a key sector, in Cape Verde’s economy. This workshop will undertake a critical review of the finance cluster to examine the...
A structural challenge that Cape Verde has always had to grapple with is unemployment. The growth over the last decade led to growth in employment with sizeable number of jobs created in the tourism sector as well as construction and real estate. However, job creation in recent years, especially since the 2008 global downturn began, has been very anemic. Unemployment rate is on the increase. In...
The transformation agenda is a comprehensive long-term strategy for the development of Cape Verde’s economy premised on capitalizing on the few natural or comparative advantages of Cape Verde – ample ocean, geostrategic location, and a tropical climate. The agenda envisions transforming the Cape Verdean economy into a modern, high income and services economy based on new growth “clusters”. No...
Agribusiness cluster is a key element of the transformation agenda. It is a cluster that the government has made substantial investments in recent years with the construction of dams to mobilize water for agriculture. Major efforts have also been made to facilitate the adoption of new technologies that have led to substantial increase in the number of acreage under irrigation. Production has...
There is a worldwide consensus today that innovative entrepreneurs and a robust private sector are the engines for competitiveness and national transformation, since entrepreneurship is first and foremost a question of value creation and the private sector is who competes in the global market. In short, entrepreneurship and private sector development are essential for the transformation of...
Over the past ten years, Cape Verde embarked on the implementation of the economic transformation strategy. The government undertook significant reforms and invested substantial amounts of resources in infrastructure development (water mobilization, energy production, roads, airports, education, etc...). The government also made important reforms to improve the business environment and make...
Over the last decade and before the global economic crisis that started in 2008, Cape Verde was among the fastest growing economies in the world. The result is that Cape Verde became a lower middle-income country, having graduated from the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries in 2008. Between 1995 and 2007, for example, Cape Verde ranked among the top high growth economies in Africa...
In April 2003, the Government of Cape Verde held a Forum on Cape Verde’s Transformation Strategy. Eleven (11) years after implementation of this Strategy, the Government found it necessary to hold a second Forum, with the entire Cape Verdean society, to review the progress made and, from there, identify the strategy and actions to accelerate the transformation process.
The transformation agenda was a response to the need for economic diversification. Since its formulation, tourism has grown to become a dominant sector of the economy, currently representing over 20 percent of GDP and a major portion of services exports and foreign direct investment in Cape Verde. The fear now is that, despite the transformation agenda, Cape Verde will become a mono-economy,...
Between 2001 and 2003, Cape Verde undertook a series of national reflections that culminated in the agenda for transformation that has guided development management in Cape Verde over the last decade. The transformation agenda aims to transform and diversify the economy of Cape Verde based utilizing the advantage of its strategic location. It is now ten years since the agenda was formulated....
