Cabo Verde: The Tech Islands of West Africa and Gateway to the Continent of the Future

Cabo Verde: The Tech Islands of West Africa and Gateway to the Continent of the Future

A small archipelago located off the west coast of Africa, with a population of about 500,000, may have clear ambitions of becoming a technological hub of reference on the African continent. This is a question that I know is always on the minds of those who hear our ambition. "Size doesn't matter anymore," and Africa is the continent of the future when it comes to digital technology. In 2022, according to the African Tech Startups Funding Report, African startups raised $3.3 billion, and a report released by Google/IFC estimates that the internet economy in Africa has the potential to contribute an additional $180 billion to the continent's GDP by 2025. Investment is on the rise, and there is enormous potential. Why? Africa has the youngest population in the world, with an average age of 18 years. To put it into perspective, the average age in Portugal is 46.8. It is the young people who create and consume the most technology. Moreover, we are talking about a continent where its population is no longer willing to wait indefinitely for an improvement in their living conditions. A "leapfrogging" is necessary, a frog jump, towards major transformations, and that will only be possible with innovative strategies and a lot of associated technology.

By this point, you may be a little less skeptical about the potential of the African continent, but you may still be completely skeptical about a small country that heavily depends on tourism and remittances from its emigrants. To that understandable skepticism, I always recall a phrase from an American Ambassador to Cabo Verde, who said that "Cabo Verde's success depends on the stubbornness of taking steps bigger than its legs," audacity mixed with a boldness of a nation that is small but has big dreams. Cabo Verde has always invested in its human capital and valued its political and economic stability and security, fundamental values to achieve top positions that place the country at the forefront of development rankings on the African continent. But the new times demand more, and the country and its political leadership are aware of that. The digital economy has been prominently featured in the speeches of the Prime Minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, who has raised the digital flag high - recently, he was the only African political leader invited to speak at Web Summit Rio - and shared the central focus with energy transition and maritime economy, as expressed in the Country's Strategic Sustainable Development Plan 2022-2026 (PEDS II).

We aim to retain our talent, attract talent from our diaspora - "Bright minds time to return" (estimated to be more than double the resident population) - and attract talent from around the world to Cabo Verde through programs like our remote working for digital nomads. But we also want to leverage the talent that is wasted in various countries on our continent due to political and social instability. Who wouldn't want to live in a safe country with attractive tax conditions for digital professionals? 29 degrees Celsius all year round, fantastic beaches, a welcoming environment, vibrant cultural events, and a place where people can celebrate their identity, regardless of their sexual orientation, skin color, origin, or religion.

We want to improve the lives of those living in Cabo Verde through digital technology but also design solutions for current and future global challenges through technology. We aim to be a gateway to the continent of the future, Africa, but also build bridges between different continents, leveraging our central position in the Atlantic. We are only one hour by plane from Dakar (Senegal, Africa), 3h30 from Lisbon (Portugal, Europe), 3 hours from Fortaleza (Brazil, South America), and 7 hours from Boston (USA, North America). To achieve this, we have decided to make a serious investment in infrastructure, talent, and community building.

In terms of infrastructure, we are finalizing the construction of a technology park Parque Tecnológico Arquipélago Digital de Cabo Verde to serve not only our country but also as a central technology park for our sub-region. It will have a special economic technology zone (ZEET) with attractive tax and para-fiscal conditions. We have strengthened our connectivity through the EllaLink ???? Subsea Cable submarine cable, a state-of-the-art fiber optic submarine cable. In Cabo Verde, internet penetration exceeds 80%, twice the African average, and 20% above the world average. 4G covers over 80% of the population, and 5G is about to be launched. It only makes sense to have roads (infrastructure) if there are vehicles (talent).

Therefore, we have started teaching the language of the internet (English) from the 5th grade, introduced the Weblab (www.weblab.gov.cv) project in all secondary schools, where over 20,000 children have already learned the principles of robotics, programming, and other digital skills. We have created programs to retrain unemployed young people as programmers and are implementing training and certification programs for the employability of our talent, in partnership with important international players in the private sector ( PwC Portugal , Huawei, Microsoft, BRAVANTIC , VisionWare). Let's take the concrete example of VisionWare , a cybersecurity company that currently employs around 30 people in the city of Praia and plans to recruit another 30 employees this year, also establishing a center in S?o Vicente for global cybersecurity threat analysis. They work for the world from Cabo Verde and with local talent. Whenever this happens, we know we are on the right track.

The best way to gauge the temperature of our ecosystem is when we see young talents forming tech companies and international companies establishing themselves in our country and recruiting local talent. The temperature in the private sector has been rising steadily, with the Cabo Verde Digital Stock Exchange, which has already supported about 200 young people in creating their technology-based startups (financial support + mentoring), along with GoGlobal, which has allowed our young people to participate in international events ( Web Summit in Lisbon, Collision in Toronto, WebSummit in Rio de Janeiro, Africa Innovation Summit in Rwanda) that serve as a stage and place to form partnerships with the best and other programs that have created a community (www.digital.cv) Cabo Verde Digital

In international rankings: in the GovTech Maturity Index, Cabo Verde ranks 1st on the African continent. In the ITU ICT Infrastructure Ranking, we rank 4th on the continent. Recently, we moved up 2 places in the Startup Blink ranking, positioning us 2nd in the West African region and 1st in the PALOP. We are a reference in E-Gov in Africa, thanks to the excellent work that NOSI - Nucleo Operacional da Sociedade de Informacao , a public business entity focused on the development of digital governance in our country, has been doing. We are creating conditions to also become a reference in the private sector, allowing our startups to export their products/services and enabling international companies to succeed with talent recruited in Cabo Verde.

We have challenges, but we know where we want to go and we are working to achieve those objectives. We have defined public policies and are investing resources courageously in this sector, following the will of the Cape Verdeans to have a better life through digital technology and to leverage the talent that was born in our islands, which is now starting to return to our islands and to choose our islands as a base in this rapidly transforming world. The time has come to capitalize on the strategic positioning and human capital of Cabo Verde for the benefit of our country. Don't be too skeptical; artificial intelligence through ChatGPT says it's possible, and we believe it too, and we are ready to continue making and telling our story. Cabo Verde is sea, music, love, talent, but it is also Digital.

Read the article in Portuguese here - https://jornaleconomico.pt/noticias/cabo-verde-as-ilhas-tech-da-africa-ocidental-e-ponte-para-o-continente-do-futuro/

#CaboVerde #Africa #capeverde #innovation #Diaspora #Tech #digital #CaboVerdeDigital #talent