Cabo verde

The year 2023 fea­tured not only the 30^th anniver­sary of the coop­er­a­tion agree­ment but also high-lev­el vis­its. In March, Franz Fay­ot, Min­is­ter for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs, vis­it­ed Cabo Verde for the 22^nd part­ner­ship com­mis­sion meet­ing between the two coun­tries. In May, the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, José Maria Neves, made a state vis­it to Lux­em­bourg, accom­pa­nied by three min­is­ters from Cabo Verde.

The cur­rent ICP, which cov­ers the 2021 – 2025 peri­od, is enti­tled ​“Devel­op­ment – Cli­mate – Ener­gy” ICP (DCE, EUR85.4 mil­lion). This is the first ICP in which Lux­em­bourg is imple­ment­ing a whole-of-gov­ern­ment approach, facil­i­tat­ing the inte­gra­tion and coor­di­na­tion of devel­op­ment actions and oth­er areas, such as ener­gy tran­si­tion and com­bat­ing cli­mate change. The activ­i­ties are imple­ment­ed by LuxDev and ADA (inclu­sive finance project which forms part of the pri­or­i­ty area of employ­ment). For the first time, the Min­istry of For­eign and Euro­pean Affairs, the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate and Bio­di­ver­si­ty (MECB) and the Min­istry of the Economy’s Gen­er­al Direc­torate for Ener­gy have joined forces to draft and imple­ment a sin­gle mul­ti­an­nu­al pro­gramme. The var­i­ous pro­grammes in the ICP cov­er the whole of the arch­i­pel­ago and focus on the fol­low­ing pri­or­i­ty areas of inter­ven­tion: employ­ment, water and san­i­ta­tion, ener­gy tran­si­tion, cli­mate action and gov­er­nance and local devel­op­ment. These pri­or­i­ty areas of inter­ven­tion are com­ple­ment­ed by sec­toral bud­getary sup­port in the employ­ment and health sectors.

The bilat­er­al pro­gramme in the ener­gy sec­tor pro­vides sub­stan­tial sup­port in the form of pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies with a bud­get of EUR3 mil­lion for the prepa­ra­tion of a flag­ship project under the Euro­pean Union (EU) Glob­al Gate­way ini­tia­tive. This involves the con­struc­tion of a pumped stor­age plant, sim­i­lar to the plant at Vian­den but on a small­er scale, suit­able for the size of the San­ti­a­go Island net­work. The pow­er plant will be financed by a blend­ed finance frame­work loan from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, grant­ed in Octo­ber 2023, for the improve­ment of the country’s ener­gy infrastructure.

With­in the frame­work of mul­ti­lat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, two inter­ven­tions imple­ment­ed by UN agen­cies under the DCEICP were launched in 2023. As part of the pri­or­i­ty area of employ­ment, a project is being imple­ment­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO), designed to pro­mote for­mal employ­ment. The local devel­op­ment pri­or­i­ty area is being addressed through a pro­gramme imple­ment­ed joint­ly by the Unit­ed Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) and the Unit­ed Nations Human Set­tle­ments Pro­gramme (UN-Habi­tat), with the aim of lim­it­ing or elim­i­nat­ing asym­me­tries between the islands.

There are cur­rent­ly three Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs work­ing in Cabo Verde, fund­ed by the MFA.

The NGDOBete­buerg Hëlleft is imple­ment­ing a project to ren­o­vate and rede­vel­op school infra­struc­ture in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Mosteiros on the island of Fogo. ECPAT is imple­ment­ing a project to strength­en the capac­i­ties of Cabo Verde’s local net­works so that chil­dren, ado­les­cents, fam­i­lies, local author­i­ties and key com­mu­ni­ty actors involved in child pro­tec­tion are aware of the risks of sex­u­al exploita­tion and abuse and are equipped to pre­vent them. The NGDOGuiden a Scouten fir eng Welt is imple­ment­ing activ­i­ties to sup­port for­mal schools and voca­tion­al training.