Cape Verde Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Cape Verde

Cape Verde (officially Cabo Verde) is a small archipelago of ten volcanic islands roughly 570 km off the West African coast, with a GDP of approximately $2.6–2.8 billion and a GDP per capita of $5,273 (current US$, World Bank, 2024), or $11,262 on a purchasing-power-parity basis. Real GDP growth reached 7.3% in 2024, driven by a strong post-pandemic tourism rebound (African Development Bank), though 2025 growth forecasts diverge by institution: the IMF projects around 5%, the World Bank forecasts 5.9%, and the AfDB estimates 5.2%, citing power-supply disruptions and lower official development assistance. Inflation accelerated to an average of 2.3% in 2025, prompting the central bank to raise its policy rate from 1.50% (November 2024) to 2.50% (February 2025). The currency, the Cape Verdean escudo (CVE), has been pegged to the euro since 1999 at a fixed rate of 1 EUR = 110.265 CVE, underpinned by a Currency Cooperation Agreement with Portugal — a structural anchor eliminating exchange-rate risk for euro-based trade and investment. The economy has essentially no significant agriculture (less than a tenth of land is arable, and the country imports over 90% of its food) and negligible natural-resource extraction; it instead rests on services (around 70%+ of GDP), overwhelmingly driven by tourism, remittances, and public/development transfers.

Cape Verde is one of only two countries ever to graduate from the UN’s Least Developed Country (LDC) category — Botswana graduated in 1994, and Cape Verde followed on 20 December 2007, becoming a lower-middle-income country. This achievement underpins its unique international standing: it is the only African nation with a “Special Partnership” with the EU, established in November 2007. Cape Verde is also a member of ECOWAS. Trade is heavily imbalanced: in 2023 exports totaled roughly $54M to Spain (19.2% share) and $41M to Portugal (14.7%), dominated by prepared/preserved foods (73.7% of exports), while imports were led by Portugal ($535M, 30.4% share), mainly fuel, foodstuffs and building materials (World Bank WITS). FDI, concentrated overwhelmingly in tourism, was reported at roughly €376 million in 2023 before declining to about $0.11 billion in 2024 from $0.16 billion in 2023; Portugal is the largest source of FDI, followed by Spain, the Netherlands and France. The investment promotion agency Cabo Verde TradeInvest reported roughly $1.9 billion in approved investment projects and MoUs signed in 2024.

Cape Verde’s resident population is approximately 590,000–600,000, but the diaspora is substantially larger than the resident population — estimates range from roughly 700,000 Cape Verdeans living abroad to over one million when descendants are included, with remittances still equivalent to about 12.2% of GDP in 2023 (World Bank), among the highest remittance dependencies in the world. Unemployment stood at 11.9% in 2025, while youth unemployment (ages 15–24) stood at 20.1% in 2024, reflecting a structurally difficult labor market for young workers despite the country’s high literacy rate. On the political front, Cape Verde held legislative elections in 2025/2026 in which the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) won an absolute majority (37 of 72 seats, 48.0% of the vote) over the incumbent Movement for Democracy (MpD, 33 seats, 44.75%), with PAICV’s Francisco Carvalho named prime minister-designate; presidential elections are scheduled for November 2026. On the economic-record side, 2024 delivered an all-time tourism high, and in early 2024 the WHO certified Cape Verde malaria-free, a notable public-health milestone. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current exposure to tourism-sector concentration and remittance dependency directly.