Cape Verde bets on tech to reverse postcolonial brain drain

For much of its history since its discovery by the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of west Africa served as a hub of the international slave trade, with Africans forcibly transported to marketplaces before being distributed across the Americas and Europe.

Now, almost 150 years since slavery was abolished in Cape Verde, and just over 50 years since independence from Portugal, Pedro Fernandes Lopes wants the country to become a beacon for the free movement of human and financial capital across the African diaspora.

Lopes is Cape Verde’s secretary of state for the digital economy and an important figure in its drive to become a digital hub for west Africa and beyond, modelled in part on Estonia’s much-vaunted digitisation programme.

The country had been developing digital governance services for use across Portuguese-speaking Africa for decades when the Covid-19 pandemic struck, tourism numbers briefly plummeted and the government accelerated plans to diversify the economy through technology. In 2021, the digital economy ministry was created with the goal of making the sector account for a quarter of GDP by 2030.

In many respects, the omens are positive. The ministry already provides public services for the approximately 529,000 people living in Cape Verde’s 10 islands, as well as its vast diaspora, which is estimated to be three to four times larger than the country’s population. The archipelago’s internet penetration rate is now 75% – double the African average; schoolchildren are being taught robotics and coding in shipping containers; and more undersea cables are being laid beneath the Atlantic.

“The routes enslaved people were taken along from Africa are the same routes that the submarine cables pass along in the Atlantic, which is crazy,” said Lopes in an interview in his office in the capital, Praia, opposite a large mural of prominent Cape Verdean poets painted on a rocky slope. “History repeats itself – but each generation has an opportunity to tell their own history.”

The digital drive is central to another goal: reducing Cape Verde’s emigration rate, one of the world’s highest relative to population.

Jessica Sanches Tavares is an adviser to the board of directors at TechParkCV, a £44.78m technology facility with an incubation centre for startups, a youth training centre and a conference auditorium.

Born in Paris to parents who emigrated before her birth, Tavares has wanted to “return” to Cape Verde since childhood, and finally did so within the last few years.

“There is an energy, an ambition, a will to build, and it is really stimulating to be part of it,” she said. “There are still challenges but I think we are on the right trajectory.”

Most of the financing for the facility and its smaller campus in the city of Mindelo came as a loan from the African Development Bank. In December, it will host the Web Summit, one of the world’s largest technology events, for its first appearance on the continent since it began in 2009.

Tavares said TechParkCV had so far attracted about two dozen companies seeking to benefit from its location in a tax-incentivised special economic zone.

“Companies can develop their activities from Cape Verde, work remotely with clients [worldwide] and do it in conditions [that are] at once technically and economically competitive,” she said.

“All this does not function in a silo. The talents trained can then lean on the datacentre, install themselves in the business centre, or even launch their projects via the incubation centre.”

Lopes said: “[We] don’t want to rely on foreign aid or support. I think nowadays there is a big opportunity for the global south to not depend on the former colonisers … what we’re going to do is open the market of Africa for unicorns but also trying to create unicorns of Africa here.”

There are barriers to progress, notably poor air connectivity to and from destinations within Africa, and recurring reports that black Africans – particularly from Nigeria, which constitutes one of the continent’s largest tech markets – are being targeted at Cape Verde’s airports for extra searches.

Some within the ecosystem say startups are overreliant on government support. Up to 100 startup founders are reportedly receiving funding to cover the salaries of at least six staff members, while attendance at tech events abroad is also fully subsidised by the government.

Still, Lopes struck an optimistic note: “I’m sure that this generation doesn’t want [only] to come back like their parents did when they are retired … If we change the idea that people leave the country and also tell bright minds to return, things will change. But we cannot just have the narrative. You have to walk the talk. And that’s what we are doing now.”