(introduction...)

In January, the whole world was on tenterhooks watching the fate of a little country in the Middle East, Kuwait, and, other than for the occasional mention of the Baltic States, the media had no interest in anything else. So the political upheavals of another little country, Cape Verde, thousands of miles away from the Gulf, had no chance of hitting the headlines and in some cases indeed, passed virtually unnoticed by public opinion in the countries of Africa, although they were to have their influence later on.

It was on 13 January, just 48 hours before the UN ultimatum to Iraq expired, that the Movement for Democracy (MPD), the party 41-year old lawyer Carlos Veiga had founded a mere eight months previously, achieved Africa’s first political switch in an election. And what a victory it was. The MPD took twice as many seats (56 to 23) as the country’s African Independence Party (PAICV), the single party in power since independence 15 years before. Prime Minister Pedro Pires accepted defeat and resigned. His party’s only good showing had been on Fogo island, his own constituency, and Boa Vista, President Pereira’s. There were heavy losses on the more populated islands of Santiago, Sao Vicente and Santo Antao.

A month later, it happened again. While international attention was focused on the land battle soon to be waged against Iraq, Cape Verdean voters were determinedly back at the polls on 17 February, confirming their vote in the legislatives and electing political newcomer Antonio Mascarenhas, the challenger, over incumbent Aristides Pereira, the Father of Independence, by 72 % to 26 % in the presidentials. This put an end to speculation about cohabitation by an MPD government and a PAICV president by those who were convinced that the outcome of the legislative election meant more of a lack of confidence in the rather authoritarian rule of Pedro Pires than a decline in the influence of the PAICV. They had to submit to the evidence. The Cape Verdeans had rejected their longstanding leaders and the policy they stood for en bloc.

The ironic thing is that the PAICV only had themselves to blame for their own downfall. Without any pressure from the street (as there was in Cd’Ivoire and Benin and Cameroon, for example), it looked to events in Eastern Europe and decided to abandon its constitutional single party status in February 1990, a decision which was rubber-stamped by the National Assembly in September. At that stage, of course, the leaders were convinced that their historical legitimacy as independence fighters and the undeniable progress the country had made under their management were adequate protection against electoral defeat, as former PM Pedro Pires readily admits. ‘That is so. We never imagined we could lose ‘ So, as Georgina de Mello, a former party official in Praia, adds, ‘we didn’t campaign to win. We spent most of the time preparing the institulional framework for the democratic transition. Defeat wasn’t one of the scenarios and even our most pessimistic forecasts predicted victory’.

Although this does not detract from the old team’s merit in opening the door to democracy, it does tarnish the crown prepared for the conversion to pluralism and put a question mark over its commitment to political pluralism had it known its days were numbered. At all events, it would have behaved differently and tried the well-known tactic of divide and rule among its opponents. ‘We should have encouraged other parties to emerge’, Pedro Pires says regretfully. ‘It would have enabled us to prevent the Contra front against the PAICV’. The UCID (the Independent and Democratic Party) and the UPICV (the People’s Union for Independence) were clandestine for years and indeed tried to become legal, but they were unable to get all the signatures they needed in time - despite a last-minute push from a PAICV worried about the first bad opinion polls, it is whispered in Praia - although they could have expected to do well on at least the two most heavily populated islands of Santo Antao and Sao Vicente.

There is no doubt that the MPD landslide was due to the forced union of the opposition and to Movement candidates getting the anti-PAICV vote. But why was the electorate in a country which even the IMF and the World Bank said was properly run so disenchanted? The World Bank’s latest report on Cape Verde had said there was ‘proper, 5% pa growth of GDP in the 1980s largely thanks to sound financial and economic management’. The new Prime Minister recognises (in his interview) that there was no real corruption in the country. So why was the old government team thrown out?

‘Because of a whole range of factors of varying importance’, claims Pedro Pires. He is still badly upset by defeat and has not finished shaking up his party, which has no more State subsidies and no idea what to do with its many permanent staff. The PAICV, he claims, ‘was hit by shock waves from the drive to modernise Cape Verdean society and had to carry the can for problems which were the by-products of its achievements... We solved the education problem, but it made the employment crisis worse. We ran an agrarian reform and redistributed the land, but it upset the old owners. We set up a lay State and got the abortion law voted, but the very influential Catholic church was angry about it. And we wanted to put an end to the welfare state and get the people to help pay for education and health care and they didn’t line that either’.

Pedro Pires waved away the idea that his (according to some) autocratic running of the country and the arrogance of a number of PAICV leaders might have had something to do with the electoral downfall. The ‘immediatist’ mentality of the people was to blame, he maintained, for they wanted an instant solution to their employment, housing and health problems and had been seduced by MPD promises. Nonetheless, there was a massive turnout for the Carlos Veiga party in rural Santiago and Santo Antao, where there are big contingents of beneficiaries of the agrarian reform, and if there was anyone who should have been happy and shown their gratitude at the elections, it was these former landless peasants who had become landowners thanks to the PAICV.

And perhaps the Cape Verdeans were just tired of having the same (power-weary) leaders for 15 years and all they wanted was Mudan a change, and new, young leaders. That is perhaps what Joshantre Oliviera, a young Sa island tradesman, meant when he said that the ‘African Independence Party has lost its raison d’e now the country is sovereign. It’s the party of the past. Most Cape Verdeans are young and they are looking for something to develop the islands’.

Perhaps, quite simply, despite the nearness to Africa and the lessons that might be learned from it, Cape Verde is above all a piece of the Caribbean which has drifted to this side of the Atlantic. In the West Indies, to which its Creole society unites it, spectacular changes of majority are nothing unusual, as the recent history of Jamaica and Barbados shows. But that is something that only future elections will tell.

For the time being, the PAICV is getting ready for what it hopes will be a salutary spell in opposition. The party has to be reorganised to meet the new situation and modernised to give it fresh impetus and bring out new leaders.

As for the MPD, it knows it has to respond to the great expectations it has aroused in the people of Cape Verde soon. But will the people have the patience to wait for the new policy to beat fuit? That is the question. But as Rural Development and Fisheries Minister Antonio Gualberto do Rosario says, ‘not only do they have a lot of waiting to do. They are also available to participate’. And the key to government action, as he sees it, is ‘how far it can enable Cape Verdeans to take part in the proper democratisation of society and take part in development at all levels’.

The country’s new leaders are young (they are all around 40) and enthusiastic. They have no complexes about what they have to do and the fact that they have all got undeniable professional success behind them and left well-paid jobs for meagre ministerial salaries augurs well. The most important thing is that they ate not starting from scratch. The country’s economy is healthy, overall, bearing in mind its particular characteristics, and the successful transition to democracy may attract greater interest from funders.

So, Cape Verde, as State Secretary for Cooperation Josonteiro pointedly remarks, is well placed to fad out whether the causes of under-development really are solely the oft-blamed bad management and corruption combined with no democracy and no people participation. ‘We are getting rid of these problems, so logically speaking we should develop... Unless there are other rearsons...’

Amadou TRAORE

An interview with the President, Antonio Mascarenhas Monteiro

‘A single party bears the seeds of dictatorship’

Who would have thought a few months ago that Antonio Mascarenhas Monteiro - Tony, as they call him on the thousands of election posters still to be seen all over the islands - would be elected President of the Republic by three out of four voters in the wake of an MPD victory and with that party’s support? No-one. And certainly not Tony. He was hesitant about standing for supreme office, as if unwilling to put himself forward, right up until the last minute. For this is a modest man, it is true, who opens the door of his little house in Praia himself, seeing in and out visitors to the home he intends to live in even after taking up his duties.

Antonio Mascarenhas, who had a spell with the Guinean maquis in the fight for independence before training as a lawyer in Louvain (Belgium), has been President of the Supreme Court for the past 10 years and, at the age of 47, is representative of his country. The Courier met him just a few weeks before the official investiture on 22 March.

· Mr President, were you surprised at your showing at the elections?

- Not at all. During the early election campaign from December to 14 January, when the campaign proper started, I realised I had a very good chance of a comfortable win, so I wasn’t surprised. One or two of the opinion polls even suggested I would do a bit better.

· The post is a rather unusual one in this country now, isn’t it, because, unlike your predecessor, you have no political responsibilities, do you? Or have I got that wrong? How do you see it?

- A President of the Republic, I believe, still has political functions even in a semi-presidential system. The President’s powers have not yet been fixed, that is true, and the Assembly is going to revise the constitution to take care of that soon. But the President, to my mind, has moral authority. He may also wield influence, which is very important in a country like ours. There are some fields in which, traditionally, the President can intervene, of course, like foreign affairs and national defence. He can have an influence I believe, nevertheless.

· Will the present external relations policy he changed at all?

- No, not fundamentally, because our existing relations, particularly with the European countries and the USA and the African countries, have to be kept up and taken further if at all possible. Cape Verde’s involvement in our sub-region of Africa and in inter-African organisations like ECOWAS and the OAU will be more important than it was before. We are going to try and see if we can do a little bit ore than before.

· You are still a young man and you could perhaps have chosen a more active job than that of father of the nation...

- That doesn’t depend only on me. As you know, the President’s powers have yet to be defined. I do not personally refuse to wield wider powers than those currently enshrined in the constitution. But the Assembly has to decide what my powers are first and that 1 shall act in the light of them afterwards. I can’t tell you now that I know the Assembly will be revising the constitution in a month’s time and I shall have such and such a power when it has finished. That would be very unwise of me. But I do know that the idea is to redefine the powers of the President.

· The election campaign has apparently left signs of a split in the population. Is that so?

- No, I don’t think so, because there was a massive vote for one candidate. My opponent only got 26% of the votes, but I don’t believe that 26% of Cape Verdeans look upon themselves as an enemy faction of the majority which voted for me. The campaign was hard, there is no doubt about that, once my opponent and his team realised that their chances of winning were minimal. As I said, it was obvious in January that I was going to win. All the surveys said so and the best survey is contact with the people. I was enthusiastically received everywhere I went. There was great euphoria’ whereas they were so cool with him that he sometimes had to cut his meetings short.

· Why do you think the people stopped hacking the PAICV and the former President?

- I think because a single party in power for 15 years is too much. A single party bears the seeds of dictatorship and nepotism and some abuse of power, although things never got beyond a certain point in Cape Verde, of course... People who are in power for years get arrogant in the end too, because they are accountable to no-one, and that is the mentality which led to disenchantment with the PAICV and its regime.

When you are there for so long, you start protecting your friends and spending money in ways not always catered for by the law. And then you get power-weary. Even in democracies, this leads to the party in power being thrown out and the phenomenon is even more marked in a single party.

· Cape Verde has taken the same path as Sao Tomanother island country and a Portuguese-speaking one as well. Will democracy catch on faster on Portuguese-speaking islands, do you think?

- I don’t know. I think it’s just a coincidence. It could well have been Guinea and Benin instead of Sao Tomnd Cape Verde, for example.

· Except that those countries leave lots of political parties and Cape Verde hasn’t. Is there room for more parties here?

- There’s always room. Indeed, there is a law which provides for political parties to be set up. All a group of men and women have to do is decide to form a party and they can. Two parties are being legalised at the moment.

· If these parties were legal, might they not take some of the MPD’s popular support?

- Yes they might. If you are trying to beat a single party system on your own and you have popular support, you are bound to catalyse the whole of the opposition. But if there were other political forces, I think that the votes would be spread right across the opposition.

· In future, then, you expect to gain fewer roses?

- Of course, because if there are other parties out there, they are bound to get votes too.

· Will the new team have the people it needs to put its policy into practice?

- Yes, I think we have a sound government team of competent people here, but when it comes to putting policy, economic policy especially, into practice, it is not just people you need. You have to have material resources and that does not just depend on us. As you know, Cape Verde is a very poor country which depends above all on international cooperation to go on living.

· But aren’t you worried that in a country run by the PAICV for so long, the senior people might stay loyal to them?

- That is not the question. Those who belong to the other party are entitled to go on working. They will be used a; cadres, as Cape Verdean citizens. We are short of senior people, in fact, although we are perhaps not so badly off as other countries in this respect. There is a lot of ground to cover here too, I think.

A.T.

Profile

Cape Verde

Official debt (1987): $131 million (70% of GNP)

An interview with Prime Minister Carlos Veiga

‘Leaders must not behave like rich men’

At the end of last year, Carlos Alberto Wahnon de Carvalho Veiga, a 41-year old lawyer virtually unknown outside Cape Verde, suddenly made history by leading his party, the MPD (Movement for Democracy), in the first political switch to occur at an election in Africa.

Veiga is an eloquent speaker who inspires his listeners with words that are right on target. Even now, people all over the islands are delightedly dotting their conversation with some of the more caustic remarks of the election campaign - at which time he was still head of the country’s biggest legal office. But as a serious Head of State he its aware of what he has to do to make a success of the change. He does some direct talking in this interview with The Courier, which he gave in admirable French.

· The country you have just begun to lead had the reputation of being managed properly. Is this borne out by what you have found?

- No, we don’t think it was managed properly. We think there was a lot of wastage and no coherent development plan. There were plenty of projects, of course, and some of them work and some of them don’t, but they add up to nothing very coherent. So, generally speaking, we believe that things could be better. There teas been no corruption, that we recognise. Our predecessors worked and they wanted the best for Cape Verde, but we feel that things could be even better.

· The extent of your election victory the people’s great expectations mean you have to go for rapid results if you are to satisfy them. Can you manage this?

- We think that winning creates an obligation to work hard and do better than before. Some results can be obtained rapidly. It isn’t easy and we have told the people that there will be problems and hat they have to understand them. There are some problems we will not be able to solve over the next five years, but we are going to do what we can to improve the various situations here in Cape Verde as much as we can.

· Which are the sectors in which you expect to get fairly rapid results?

- In the administration, for example. You can get rapid results when you decentralise power. And you can do so on the legal front too.

· Do you want to improve the administration?

- Yes, we do. We want to ensure that it is no longer a dead weight and that it facilitates things which are good for the

· What are the reasons for this decentralisation you just mentioned?

- These are islands, with different possibilities and what are sometimes different problems. And they have their own cultural features too. We have to make the most of this if we are to solve some of the problems facing our people. We think that they were dissatisfied with the former government because the majority of them have not had the benefit of development. There are daily problems that have to be solved fast and we think this is something that can be done in the municipalities if they are given the power to do so, i.e. resources that are currently concentrated here in the ministries in Praia.

· But on some islands, that may amount to giving the power to the opposition, if it has a majority.

- I don’t know that it will, but if it does, never mind. We think the most important thing is to solve the people’s problems. But I am convinced that this decentralisation will be of benefit to the government and the party in power at the municipal elections.

· You said just now that the previous rme had no coherent view of development in Cape Verde. That means that you are going to suggest one, doesn’t it? Along what lines?

- We have to start with the very real fact that many of our islands have assets, Cape Verde’s development has to be founded on the development of the regions and integration has to be achieved in very specific areas, in fishing and tourism and industry. Nationally speaking, these three sectors, plus agriculture, are what we should be focusing on, I believe.

· Those were also the previous government’s priorities, weren’t they...?

- Indeed they were. They were its priorities, but it never did more than announce them. It never put them into practice. A lot of tourist initiatives were blocked all those years, for example. We have to open up and that is why we maintain that the administration has to be improved fast so there is no hanging about and the Minister doesn’t have to wait for months to decide whether a project should go on or not. Decisions have to be faster. People have to be given more initiative. That is what is missing here.

· You are probably going for greater liberalisation on the economic front, aren’t you? Does that mean that the State is going to get out of production?

- Not necessarily. The economy needs less of the State in it and it needs a better State. We have a host of public firms for the time being and we are going to decide which ones are being run properly and not dead weights as far as the economy is concerned.

· Which are they?

- The TAVC, Cape Verde’s Air Transport Company, for example, is doing very badly and CABENAVE, the shipyard, isn’t doing so well either.

· Are they going to be privatised?

- Not necessarily. We shall be looking into them. Some of them will have to be privatised, I agree, but others, the maritime transport companies among them’ are practically bankrupt. The lessons are there to be learned.

· Some issues, agrarian reform, for example, and the abortion law, came up again during the election campaign. How are you going to handle them?

- We shall do as we promised. We shall go to the country on abortion; organise a referendum if we have to. The essential thing as far as agrarian reform is concerned, as we see it at the moment, is to focus on three sectors - agricultural credit facilities, technical support for people wanting to work on the land and rural extension work. None of these has been dealt with for years or, if they have, not properly. And nothing has been done about agricultural credit at all. So that is the most important thing at the moment, we think Not taking land from Peter to give to Paul That causes far more problems than it solves.

· That has already happened?

- What’s done is done, but we will not go on with this policy.

· Inter-island communictions are very complicated You just brought up the problems that the maritime company and the TACV are having. Are aircraft the best way of providing regular links between the islands?

- It has to be discussed. Some people prefer boats, but you have to look at the problem as a whole Boats are perhaps best for freight, but I’m not so sure about passengers. We could also perhaps look at other ideas, Catamarans, for example. At all events, this is a sector which has to be tackled globally. TACV cannot cope all on its own

· What role do you see for the Cape Verdeans who live abroad?

- Economically and technically, a very important one. We think there are technical skills and capital which could do a lot more for Cape Verde if the people who have them were better informed. People invest here in Cape Verde in cars and houses If there had been a tighter link with emigration, these investments would have been channelled into productive sectors. But there was no confidence between the government and the emigrants, although this is something which could change very quickly. There could be rapid answers to some of our emigrants’ problems, to the customs difficulties and the maritime transport difficulties. The situation between the customs and the emigrants, who are often, heavily taxed, is cause for particular concern

· Was it lo give confidence to your emigrants that you included some in the government?

- Yes indeed. There is a lot of emigration to Portugal and some of the present ministers live there, although they haven’t always been emigrants. The most important thing on this front is to create a Secretary of State for Emigration at the Foreign Ministry This is an extremely important post

· Some emigrants I think, were involved in your or President Mascarenhas’ election campaign to the extent of financing posters...

- Yes, in the United States, but it didn’t amount to much.

· Will your government have new priorities for the country’s external relations?

- The former government’s external policy was right, generally speaking, although we think that some things call for greater emphasis To our mind, human rights, for example, should be more to the fore and our external policy should have stronger economic connotations. The external policy has to become a major part of the economic policy. And more attention has to be paid to our emigrants.

· So the host countries where the emigrants live will he privileged partners?

- Yes indeed, privileged partners as far as our emigrants are concerned. But we must also pay a great deal of attention to African integration. We shall be focusing on our relations with the African countries, particularly in the organisations we belong to, in ECOWAS, for example, and in the group of five Portuguese speaking nations, and we shall be focusing on our relations with countries closer to home, with Senegal and Gambia, in our sub-region. All this is of great importance to us.

· Since you won the elections, there have been complaints about playing a waiting game. Are your new policies going to be made public soon?

- This government is a government of management and we already have contacts. In any case, my party’s programme is very clear on external policy. As I said, it has been on the programme for a very long while.

· I was referring particularly to the economic content of your programme. That is the most important thing, after all...

- Our programme has been properly developed, especially as far as the economic sectors are concerned and we are hoping to present it to the government within a fortnight of our appointment. Once we have a constitutional government, things will be easier.

· You, like many of the ministers, are going to lose moneys by joining the government, as your legal office was a very prosperous one, wasn’t it...?

- The office was not doing badly, but my present job is an exciting one. Everyone has to make sacrifices. There were years of waste, particularly when it came to official cars. That is something you have to be careful about here in Cape Verde. The country is a very poor one and you have to be careful not to have a rich man’s policy.

· Is this something you are going to be very careful about?

- Yes indeed.

· It’s easy to say now you are only starting your term of office...

- There won’t be any problems. Before, we were there with the people. That is the difference.

· Can your opponents say they fought for independence?

- They weren’t on the inside, close to the people. We were. Whatever a government’s policy, it doesn’t have a chance here in Cape Verde if it isn’t close to the people.

· But the population did nothing all those years. It didn’t revolt...

- But when it had the opportunity to say what it thought, it said no. If we want to work for this people and not have to run the risk of a ‘no’, then we have to be careful.

· Weren’t the elections more of a vote against the PAICV than a positive vote for the MPD?

- They might have been. It was saying no to a certain kind of development project and to the focusing of power and projects on certain islands, for example.

· But with competition from other parties, you could well find yourself in a less comfortable position...

- We know we could. We don’t want to be another single party. We know that governing will be more difficult.

· But you are going to have sympathy from abroad because of your democratic transition. .

- We hope we are. The indications we have from abroad are good and we are going to make the most of this and work harder.

· Work is a word you use a great deal...

- Without work, you don’t get anything done. The Cape Verdean people already work hard and they can make great sacrifices if they know the government is backing them. Their history has been a perpetual struggle for survival, although they have never lost their ability to sing and enjoy life.

Interview by A.T.

Tourism - the engine of future growth

By early March’ Cape Verde has changed the soft covering of greenery left by the rains for the ochre dust of its volcanic soil and it is prey to the winds. That dry wind from the mainland, the dreaded lestada, blows relentlessly night and day. The islands’ plant life, starting with the glorious Prosopis Juliflora, the providence of these sere regions, has learned to adapt, bending to deflect the furious gusts. Yet the wind, never ending in its punishing of the fragile soil and its whipping away of its precious particles, may be on its way to becoming one of the stars of the country’s future development. For it is the wind which brings the dozens of wind surfers to spend hours at their favourite sport on the coast by the Morabeza and Belorizonte hotels on Sal island.

Cape Verde is one of the best places for wind surfing, which is very popular among western holiday-makers, and it is there, off Mindelo on Sao Vicente, in a narrow channel providing extra acceleration, that world speed records are set. The word has got round and more and more funboard fans are coming to the country’s beaches. New equipment is tested there every year and Wind Surf International is soon to sponsor a combination competition there. Conditions are ideal for surfing too, although this is not so well publicised for the moment. Ask Virgilio Mendon the deputy director of the Hotel Belorizonte, why tourists come to Cape Verde and the immediate answer will be ‘the wind in the winter and the beach in the summer and peace and quiet all the year round’. The islands already have 5000 tourists every year.

But it is early days for tourism. The main stumbling block is the difficulty of actually getting the tourists from their country of origin to Cape Verde and moving about between the islands is not always easy either. Although the Gulf crisis has pushed up the price of air tickets twice since the start of the tourist season, it had some positive spinoff too, as German tourists who used to go to Egypt came to Sal instead this year. Mr de Souza Lobo, the general manager of the Morabeza was delighted when these providential arrivals filled the hotel and no more rooms were vacant. The Morabeza has just improved its range of excursions by buying a fast trimaran that takes only an hour to get from Sal to the sandy beaches of Boa Vista, undeniably the finest in the country.

He and his colleague Mr Mendonagree that the government should boost Cape Verde’s tourist trade by cutting through the red tape that hinders tourist projects, making it easier for promoters to get credit and being flexible about the organisation of charter flights. There is no doubt that the new Minister of Industry Trade and Tourism, Gustavo Araujo, will be keen to hear what they have to say. Mr Araujo, a former expatriate recently back from Lisbon, where he ran a travel agency, is convinced that tourism will be the ‘driving force of the country’s new growth’ and that this is the sector to release resources to finance investments in other fields. He means to start by attracting the top end of the market, people who set trends and go to luxury hotels and are copied by the less well-off. Plans siting future tourist facilities and outlining types of promotion schemes, the requisite financial means and the extent of national staff involvement are on the drawing board.

A strategic sector

The new team has high hopes of another sector too, fisheries. ‘This is the only sector that can really be called strategic here in Cape Verde’, Rural Development and Fisheries Minister Antonio do Rosario says, ‘because the fishing potential of our Exclusive Economic Zone is considerable, because our geographical situation is such that we can develop fishing in other areas too and because of the possible links between fishing and industry - boats and processing, for example’.

The government is to have a complete overhaul of this sector, privatising Pechcaf, the State fishing firm at Mindelo, and reorganising the company which markets fish products abroad. It will also be helping private operators, emphasising research and training fishermen and other people working in this area. All Cape Verde’s islands have good potential when it comes to developing the fish industry, but Sao Vicente has the mote particular advantages of a natural deep-water port, refrigeration facilities and a shipyard, so this is where the fisheries development institute on Santiago is to be transferred.

This will be an extra asset for Sao Vicente and its port, Mindelo, which will one day have a vital part to play in developing the ‘country’s geo-strategic position’, as the time-honoured expression of Cape Verde’s situation half way between America, Europe and Africa goes. Mindelo was already a popular coal supply centre for ships going round the Cape of Good Hope in the last century and if projects on the drawing board for some time now were actually put into practice, they could bring back this lost importance.

One such scheme is a Brazilian plan to set up warehouses to store goods which would gradually be sold on markets in West Africa.

Shipping companies are also very keen on the idea of warehouses. They would mean that, instead of grouping their freight as they have to do at the moment and sending large ships to drop off small quantities at various ports in the region, where the goods can well be stuck for long periods, an expensive undertaking, they could unload the whole of their cargo at Mindelo in one go and send small boats to do the final deliveries.

The geographical situation could attract finance too, at least Cape Verde hopes so, since it is preparing to set up off-shore banks. ‘The decision will be coming soon’, Gustavo Araujo told me, ‘and it will mean we can find out how the international capital markets work, which will help the modernisation of our central bank’.

Another important side of the policy of capitalising on the geographical situation has to do with industrialisation. The Minister is convinced that his country’s low wages and skilled labour force will attract Spanish and Portuguese industries which cannot stand up to greater competition in the Single Market in 1993 and that these industries will bring in a knowledge of the markets which the Cape Verdeans do not have. This sort of transfer has already taken place in the footwear industry. A Mindelo footwear firm, which was doing very badly, was taken over by the Portuguese and has been doing well ever since, as the new organisers brought with them their list of American clients.

Industrial promoters could also be attracted by the fact that Cape Verde belongs to a number of regional organisations - ECOWAS, for example, whose treaties (on the free movement of goods especially) could open the door to the markets of 16 countries in the region. Gustavo Araujo believes that African solidarity will do a great deal for his country’s producers, as Cape Verde is small and, he hopes, ‘people won’t be wary about it’.

Agrarian reform

None of this means that agriculture will be neglected. In spite of the shortage of arable land (only 10% of the country’s 4033 km²) and very unreliable rainfall (Cape Verde is in the Sahel, let us not forget), farming is the dominant sector of the economy and provides jobs for a large part of the population. But these two major handicaps have given the islands a structural food deficit. Only in good years can the nation cover even a small percentage of its cereal requirements, so the new government is not aiming at self sufficiency, which is out of reach, but at ensuring that the peasants get as much from the land in terms of revenue as they can. Accordingly, it has no problem with the fact that a large part of the irrigated land on Santo Antao is given over to sugar cane, which is distilled to make aguardente, a much prized and very expensive alcohol. Nor that experienced vine-growers (grapes were introduced in the 19th century by a very prolific French Huguenot called Montron) working the land at the foot of the Fogo volcano, which last erupted in 1951, manage to produce thousands of litres of wine on a lunar landscape of volcanic ash and lava at various stages of decomposition. This year they produced 50000 litres of a highly alcoholic, syrupy beverage halfway between grape juice and traditional wine. One of the growers was proud to tell me that his vines bring him in an annual 350 000 to 400 000 escudos (a top civil servant only gets 25 000 a month) and that his son had emigrated to the USA but came back two years later because ‘he earned less and had to work harder for it’.

There is more talk of agrarian reform from the new government. But it will not behave like the old regime and go in for more land redistribution. It intends instead to modernise farming by bringing in new methods - greenhouses for example, and drip irrigation to maximise the water resources and double the current 3000 ha under irrigation. It will also promote new crops and develop livestock. Antonio Rosario, the Rural Development and Fisheries Minister, says that agrarian reform ‘is essentially a cultural problem of relating with the land, of changing outlooks and of encouraging people to look to the market. We have to set up an efficient rural extension service and give people who have no land the opportunity to develop other types of activity, herding and craft and cottage industry, for example, and the processing of agricultural produce such as pawpaws and coconuts and being involved in rural tourism’.

The price of success

Clearly, the country has ideas to help it breathe fresh life into the economy. It intends mobilising its large emigrant population as it has never been mobilised before. There are apparently as many Cape Verdeans abroad as at home (some say twice as many) and, even when they have been in their host country for generations, they never completely cut the ties with their ancestral land, as the sumptuous villas with closed shutters and glittering motor bikes (especially on Fogo) are there to prove. Less visible proof, although there is no doubt more of it, is the money; the thousands of postal orders which the emigrants send to their families back home, $29 million in 1986 and $35 million in 1988, mainly from the USA and the Netherlands. This represents a vital contribution to the balance of payments.

More than ever before, the emigrant community is going to be the subject of government concern and the idea is for it to invest more in the priority sectors of tourism, fishing and industry. The fact that a number of the current ministers are themselves from the ranks of the emigrants may encourage the government here, but it will take more than that to make a success of the reforms. Cape Verde will have to go on counting on external aid and, traditionally, it receives a lot, that is certain. In 1987, the figure was $87 million, which is $256 per head, and the democratic process should logically result in an increase in this manna.

But paradoxically, the country is starting to be a victim of its own success. It is a major beneficiary of food aid from the USA and now it is going to have to pay the transport costs of about $1 million, because it is considered to be a medium-income country, with a per capita GNP of $758 (1988). Much of this is not the result of local production, but of food aid and postal orders from the emigrants’ as the authorities are quick to point out. However, if development country classification criteria continue to be based on this kind of gross figure, Cape Verde will find it more and more difficult to obtain the concessional resources which have enabled it to get on so well over the past 15 years.

Infant mortality, for example, has dropped sharply to 50 per thousand now as against 130 per thousand at the time of independence. There is now one doctor for every 5220 inhabitants, whereas the figure for 1976 was one for every 23 000. And the school attendance rate for children of seven to 10 is 100%. Terrible famine was frequent in the last century, but everyone now has plenty to eat, the average consumption of the staple pulses and cereals now being 207 kg per person as against 165 kg at independence. Life expectancy is good too, at 65 being a record for the region, and the people have the fourth best quality of life index in Africa, after Libya, Mauritius and Seychelles.

The Community and the Member States have been the biggest financers of Cape Verde’s development programmes. In 1985-87, for example, they supplied 56% of the country’s total aid between them. But the new authorities see the quality of aid as being every bit as important as the quantity. Cooperation State Secretary Jose Luis Monteiro is convinced that the conventional ways of managing external assistance programmes, with all the rigid machinery of project submission and control, do not give maximum returns in Cape Verde. ‘What we need is aid arrangements that are based on agreeing on the main objectives with our partners, who will then supply us with flexible financial means that can be apportioned on a decentralised basis as unforeseeable situations crop up’.

The ideal would be for all donors to follow the example of Swedish aid, which the Cape Verdeans are tireless in praising. There is a large amount of it, about $10 million-worth per annum, the extent to which it is tied has been reduced to a minimum and, most important, it all comes in cash, which Cape Verde is using to pay for two (goods and services) import programmes, justifying the expenditure afterwards. Sweden appears to be satisfied with Cape Verde’s performance and has just increased the period of aid programming from two to three years.

One Community country, the Netherlands, is following Sweden’s example. A dialogue between The Hague and Praia was set up several months ago and, even if it fails to lead to aid in hard cash, it could trigger a major decentralisation of Dutch aid, with the central government agreeing on the main lines and then delegating to its ambassador powers which cannot be left to the Cape Verdeans.

This quest for more and more flexible assistance will not be easy, although the country’s sound management and the transparency attendant on its alternation of political parties should help. And of course there is the sympathy and admiration generated by a brave people, shaped by the pitiless natural selection of the terrible famines which punctuate its history, ever unwilling to bow to fate. These are the people who decided to stop desertification by planting 3 million trees every year (be it happy coincidence or the first results of reafforestation, rainfall has returned to normal). These are the people who have shown great maturity in electing the leaders of their choice in a peaceful manner. So what can stop them from achieving their goals?

A.T

‘...and not a drop to drink’

The country’s number one problem is brought home to the visitor as soon as he sees the sticker on the hotel bedroom wall. The picture of a dripping tap speaks for itself. ‘Water is a precious commodity in Cape Verde. Please do not waste it’.

There are no permanent water courses on the islands. The only natural source of supply is the scant rainfall, the twice-yearly showers which soon drain off the hills into the ocean. But the country collects water in many ways. It has built big tanks for collection and storage during the winter and it sells the water at 2.5 escudos per 25 litre can. At the foot of the Fogo volcano, this particular technique has been spread to the individual families, who no longer have to go on long water-fetching trips now a religious NGO has given them their own tanks and plastic piping to channel the rain from their roofs. Their supplies, enough for the period between two winters, are kept under lock and key, of course, to avoid wastage.

Boreholes, also common, are sunk in pockets of fossilbearing earth and are an essential contribution to the country’s supplies. The Community has financed many of them, particularly on Santiago, to help meet the ever-increasing demand of Praia, the capital, whose population is expanding constantly as people flock in from the rural areas. Solar pumps, motor pumps and in some cases windmills may be used to draw up the water.

The quest for water can be a Herculean task. What a job it was to drill an 800 metre gallery, shore it up and ventilate it, spend ECU 3 000 000 on it and then get only a fraction of the water expected. Yet the sacrifices are worthwhile and, in the case in point, corrective drilling could remedy the situation.

Sometimes the Cape Verdeans shift their water from, say, Santo Antao, which has plenty, to Sao Vincente, which has none, an economically viable operation in this case in view of the short distance between the two islands.

Lastly, there are a number of sea-water desalination units, the most expensive method of all, because imported energy has to be used to make it work. But three of the islands have no underground resources of any kind and in these, desalination is the only answer.

A.T.

The Cape Verdeans and America

by Miguel ALVES

On account of the terrible famines which have punctuated its history, Cape Verde has always been a land of emigration. Today, it is in the position of having more citizens living overseas than within its own frontiers. Most of these Cape Verdean expatriates live in the United States. Retired judge, Miguel Alves relates the story of these migrations.

Emigration to the USA is said to have begun when American whalers stopped off at Cape Verde to recruit men for their crew - which, Pedro Monteiro Cardoso claimed in the introduction to ‘Foclor Caboverdiano’ (2nd edition), they first did in the 17th century. This book on Cape Verdean folklore was produced by Luiz Silva, who gathered all the authentic information from the works of Antonio Carreira (or Antonio Barboza Carreira, to give him his full name), Luiz de Andrade and such publications es ‘A Voz de Cabo Verde’ and ‘O Manduci’ and points out that Cape Verde emigration experts tend to agree that emigration to the USA actually began in the 19th century.

Alfredo Margarido’s preface to ‘Foclor Caboverdiano’, of which extracts are reproduced below, says that the wave of emigration to the USA began in 1899, an idea which seems to be backed up by details from ‘O Manduco’ (Fogo, 192324), ‘A Novo Patria’ (Lisbon, 1930-32), ‘A Voz de Africa’ (Lisbon, 1913) and ‘A Voz de Cabo Verde’ (Praia, 1911-19).

‘Eugenio Tavares certainly seems very interested in this issue, possibly because the hundreds and hundreds of Cape Verdean emigrants to the USA came from the island of Brava. The leader in the 19 April 1911 edition of ‘A Voz de Cabo Verde’ is one of our most important sources of information on the conditions in which the movement first emerged. The colony saw emigration as repugnant 30 years ago, it said, Cape Verdeans traditionally dislike the idea of sailing and leaving their native soil and there were no emigrants from any of the islands in the archipelago - other than Brava, which lost a fairly large number of its inhabitants to North America, a place which was getting to be well known among our sailors working on the (mainly American) whalers which called there to recruit seamen. And from 1899 onwards the movement gathered momentum.

While giving credit to all this, there are one or two personally-known facts which we should like to bring to the reader’s attention.

Emigration from Cape Verde 1983 figures

In the I July 1950 issue of Cape Verde’s ‘Boletim de Propaganda e Informa’, the late Dr Julio Miguel Monteiro published extracts from the North American ‘Our World’, relating the exemplary behaviour of the Cape Verdean community in New Bedford and claiming that ‘the oldest of our contemporaries in the Cape Verdean colony of New Bedford is 116-year old Rosa de Barros’. So, if 1950 is taken as the reference date, Rosa must have been born in 1834 and, if she was 25 when she emigrated, she would have left Cape Verde in 1859.

Another, more personal case is that of a great uncle, Gaudencio Andrade Monteiro, who went whaling and ultimately got a master’s ticket in the US merchant marine. He died in Praia, in 1956 at the age of 75, was therefore born in 1881 and, if he started his career in whaling at 25, would have emigrated in 1906.

Conclusions

It is reasonable for Luiz Silva to have found evidence of American ships calling in at Cape Verde to recruit seamen for the whaling trade in the 17th century, although the exodus to America did not start until 1899, as Dr Alfredo Margarido has shown. ‘Exodus’ does not refer to departures prior to this date, for it is our belief that although emigration began on a small scale in the 1850s, the mass movement started in 1899.

Emigration to Senegal also began in the 18th century according to another article which the late Alfredo Mendes Rodrigues contributed to the Boletim de Propaganda de Cabo Verde (No 7, Year I of I April 1950). The article praises the conscientiousness and intelligence of the Cape Verdeans, saying that this should earn them the same consideration as the former French colony of Senegal - which led the local government to grant them building land in Dakar (at the place where the Avenue Gambetta now runs) and get the Credito Predial to provide 20-year loans to help with this.

The nearness of Cape Verde to Senegal and the fact that A.M.Rodrigues talks about the intensification of emigration suggest that small-scale emigration must have started prior to the 18th century.

M.A.

Cooperation with the EEC

by Joso MELO DE SAMPAIO

Cape Verde joined Lom in 1977, just two years after Independence. Thus it has been cooperating with the Community for 15 years, an exercise which has brought it financing worth ECU I 17 million (roughly 10 438 000 000 Cape Verdean escudos), not including what it is to get under the first LomV financial protocol. This aid was divided as follows (ECU).

Figure

The main aims of Community aid fit in well with the country’s general policy for the long term, i.e. to raise the standard of living, combat drought, work for food security and cut unemployment.

Lom & II programmes

The two national indicative programmes here helped achieve the main aims of the first national development plan, in particular by improving hygiene in Praia and increasing the water supply (and building drainage facilities and urban distribution networks, installing sewage systems in the most underprivileged areas and setting up an urban rubbish collection system). A programme of micro-projects was also run for the people of Santa Caterina and LFerreira (on Santiago). Generators were supplied to the Praia and Mindelo power stations to boost the electricity output of these two towns and a Praia Development Master Plan was produced to avoid new districts springing up unplanned and identify new areas of urbanisation.

EEC support was given to the government’s hydro-agricultural strategy of regularising rainwater runoff and encouraging infiltration with a series of rural engineering works (dykes, banks etc) and large-scale tree planting. One of Cape Verde’s biggest problems is its inadequate rainfall and hilly terrain and it has to avoid such rain as it gets running off into the sea. If it manages to do this, the cropland can gradually be extended and the structural shortage of cereals and other crops can be reduced.

The Community has made an active contribution to the huge anti-desertification campaign, particularly with a vast reafforestation scheme. On independence, the country had 2957 hectares of forest, but there are 35 000 ha now, which translate into almost 3 million trees planted every year, (equivalent to 9.23 trees per inhabitant per year).

Italy has joined the EEC on the transport and communications front, cofinancing a plan to improve Sal International Airport by reorganising the buildings for national and international travellers and the roadways and other networks. The equipment supplied has improved air traffic, assistance and navigation facilities and aid and assistance to aircraft.

Non-programme schemes

Food aid: ECU 32 million-worth of food aid (cereals, milk, butteroil, beans and so on) was sent out to Cape Verde under Lom and II. The local practice with food aid is to sell it to the people and set up counterpart funds which are managed by the FDN (the national development fund) and used to finance labour-intensive schemes to combat desertification and foster food security via rural engineering, building local roadways, planting trees and so on. This has a very remarkable effect on employment in rural areas and helps settle the people in the countryside and encourages them not to drift into the big towns.

Emergency aid: These schemes got ECU 4.05 million and 94% of it was used to help cope with the effects of the drought. The rest went into locust control schemes and relief for flood victims.

NGO co-financing: There were 30 cofinanced schemes over the period. They were worth ECU 2 384 000, a very significant amount bearing in mind that it represents 1.3 % of the monies the Community allocated to NGOs throughout the world at this time.

Stabex: The country received ECU 1.305 million in 1977-84 to make up for the loss in banana export earnings triggered by persistent drought, but it has not needed help from Stabex since.

LomII programmes

Cape Verde was allocated ECU 23 million here, ECU 20.5 million of it in grants and the rest as risk capital managed by the EIB.

The national indicative programme was signed in Praia in November 1985, but since the Community aid had to be icluded in the second national development (1986-90), the Government was unable to put forward an action programme until 1987, when the aim was to contribute to the regional development policy by:

- striking a fresh balance between the population of Praia and available resources (especially water);

- raising the standard of living;

- optimising municipal management.

Community aid, focused on the development of Praia, involved a number of interdependent schemes.

All schemes were included in a Praia City Development Programme for which a financing agreement was signed in Praia on 13 August 1988.

The schemes which have been identified and are currently being implemented are as follows.

a) Drinking water production and supply, ECU 6 million: I. Building three drainage galleries - the Bota Rama gallery (800 m long and producing between 350 and 800 cubic metres of water per day), the Mosquito (1100 m long, to raise water up to 175 m and able to provide a flow of at least 600 cubic metres per day) and the Minta Agua (500 m, with a minimum flow of 800 cubic metres per day). 2. Building an underground dam (Agues Verdes) to boost the output of this spring by about 350 cubic metres per day. The water produced by all these new sources, including the boreholes at Salineiro and S. Joao Baptista (work carried out as part of a borehole programme), will be supplied to Praia down a concrete conduit about 36 km long. A technical prefeasibility study was run for the Trinidade dam (3 km upstream of Praia), which should be able to provide the city with at least 2000 cubic metres of water per day. Additional studies (of economic and technical viability) and the specifications for implementation are being produced with the help of Spanish cooperation.

b) Water supply and drainage, ECU 3.5 million: A study of the modernisation of the water, drainage, sewage and rubbish collection master plan is being run, as is a scheme to reorganise municipal services in Praia and Mindelo and ensure technical assistance for Praia’s water and drainage management. The infrastructure planned here depends on the studies just mentioned and has therefore had to be carried over to the next Convention. Household waste collection and equipment and material have been supplied and the daily collection in Praia doubled as a result.

c) Electricity production, ECU 2.5 million: This involves remodelling the administrative side of the existing power station, installing and connecting 17 medium and low voltage transformer posts and installing a medium voltage supply network of about 18 km and a low voltage supply network of about 36 km. A feasibility study for a new power station (electrical energy production in association with water production) will be started soon.

d) Services to new districts, ECU 4.8 million: In accordance with the recommendations of the master plan, roads etc are being built in the districts of Palmarejo and S. Filipe (85 ha). This will ensure decent conditions for 15 000 people, bring in revenue for the town hall and give a boost to the building trade. Spanish cofinancing helped with the electrical side of this infrastructure and this made it possible to extend the Community operation to other parts of Praia (the industrial areas, the historic centre and link roads to the new districts and new building promotion quarters).

e) Vocational education and training, ECU 2.2 million: Once the studies are complete, Praia’s new technical centre will go up. The building, some 2800 m², is intended for the training of technicians and middle management in the areas in greatest demand on the employment market and will be able to cater for 500 students in stage one. The plan is to turn out 100 technicians and 50 middle-range cadres every year. The EEC will continue supporting the nation’s educational reform programme by providing local study awards so that instructors in additional basic education and secondary teachers can have training.

f) Improvements to urban management, ECU 0.5 million: Local administrative and urbanisation cadres in the various areas of planning and urban management are currently undergoing training in Europe as part of the programme. A further 10 have gone to Morocco to train in cartography and land surveying. A mapping operation to help with the running of priority sector schemes in the country is also being run and cartography and plotting equipment is to be supplied for Cape Verde’s Mapping Centre. An aerial photography and plotting scheme covering virtually the whole of the national territory is due to start very soon.

g) Monitoring, coordination and evaluation, ECU 0.3 million: An inter-ministerial programme monitoring committee has been set up to ensure unified steering of the programme. It combines representatives of all the technical ministries concerned, under the chairmanship of the national authorising officer and its main task is to coordinate the operation.

EIB: The EIB has contributed risk capital to the financing of scheme C (electricity production and supply), specifically for the supply of two 3000 KW generators and three transformers (two of 3000 KW and one of 360 KW). It has also financed changes to the station’s system of combustion, as well as technical assistance and training and also supplied spare parts and automobile, computer and fire-fighting equipment. The EIB financing was ECU 3 million.

Non-programme schemes

Food aid: Here, the EEC has signed the first food aid protocol, on a multiannual basis, in the history of its cooperation. The Community recognised the structural nature of the country’s food shortfall and, in May 1987, awarded multiannual aid, in annual consignments of 9000 tonnes of cereals, 3000 t of milkpowder and 200 t of vegetable oil, for 1987, 1988 and 1989. A further multiannual agreement covering 1990, 1991 and 1992 was signed in May 1990, so supplies of 9000 t of cereals and 800 t of vegetable oil will be sent annually during this time. Since the cereal harvest in 1989-90 was poor, the Community supplied additional food aid (3000 t of cereals) for 1990.

SIP - Sectoral import programme (building materials): When allocating the LomII non-programme reserve in March 1988, the Commission gave an additional ECU 4 million and Cape Verde proposed using this for a sectorial import programme to buy building materials for the construction boom in Praia (particularly for the more underprivileged sections of the population). The imported materials, i.e. redwood, pine, wood derivatives and concrete plaques, are sold on the local market to generate counterpart funds which can then be used to finance the Promebad programme to improve rundown areas (25%), step up the capital of the Cape Verde Savings Bank, which is responsible for building credit, particularly for the poorer sections of the population (25%) and to help with phase two of the building (about 52 houses) of the Housing Promotion Institute, the body in charge of building and allocating economy housing (50%).

Emergency aid - locust control: Successive locust invasions from the Sahel in November 1988 led the Community to provide the country with 3000 litres of insecticide and to cofinance (with Portugal) the provision of a helicopter, which is the best way of spraying in Cape Verde. Locust control was run on Santiago, Fogo and Santo Antao.

Regional cooperation

The meeting of EDF authorising officers in Praia in October 1986 laid down guidelines for Community support in regional cooperation. These are:

Anti-desertification, in particular by:

- improving, preserving and managing the forests;
- controlling and making rational use of underground and surface water;
- protecting and developing the catchment basins of the main rivers.

Cape Verde has not had a great deal of benefit from Sahel regional cooperation so far, because of its peripheral geographical and socio-economic. However, it has been involved in the following schemes.

- Diaper II - Improvements to the permanent regional food security diagnosis system

The idea here is to improve statistical information in the cereals and livestock sectors in the nine countries of the CILSS to make for easier formulation and regional coordination of national food sufficiency policies.

- PRS - Regional solar programme

This is to develop the Sahel’s only plentiful natural resource, solar energy. The idea is to bring in large-scale use of proven photovoltaic equipment in rural areas as an efficient contribution to desertification control, pumping water and improving living conditions thanks to the start of an electricity supply.

- PRG - Regional gas programme

This is to promote butane gas as a wood and charcoal substitute in the Sahel to reduce the demands urban consumers make on the forests.

- Precons - Sahel Regional Reafforestation and Soil Protection Programme

This was designed with the close cooperation of the Cape Verdean authorities and the Delegation with a view to transferring reafforestation and conservation techniques tested and applied in Cape Verde for some years now to other countries in the Sahel. The scheme involves developing and reafforesting 4700 ha of lard on Santiago, Santo Antao and Santo Nicolau, to be used as a training area for Sahelian foresters from other CILSS countries. A forestry handbook, other teaching equipment and training sessions in the CILSS countries are also planned. A lot is expected of this particular scheme, which is a genuine example of South-South transfer of know-how, Cape Verde being a country with a very sound knowledge and very successful record of soil conservation and the wooding of arid terrain.

- PFIE - Regional Environmental Training and Information

This is to make primary school children aware of the threats which desertification poses to the environment and food security in the nine Sahel countries and train them in the techniques of desertification control.

LomV

On 7 December, the LomV (first financial protocol) national indicative programme was signed in Praia. This means the Community will be providing Cape Verde with a total of ECU 27 million, ECU 23 million of it as Commission-managed grants and ECU 4 million as ElB-managed risk capital. This does not include any additional resources from Article 245 or any non-programme aid allocated mid-way through the first financial protocol.

The focal area of Community cooperation will cover the Praia region (or Concelho) and the schemes to be run are aimed at:

- improving the social infrastructure and providing essential goods and services;

- improving the economic environment, in particular on the infrastructure side; - improving the living conditions of the rural and suburban populations in the Concelho de Praia to reduce the flow of people moving into the capital;

- helping the government drive to set up a better urban management system;

- backing up the institutions in charge of managing public services;

- helping develop human resources, particularly in technical education.

The Community aid will involve schemes to:

- produce drinking water, by continuing schemes to improve drinking water availability;

- supply water and drainage facilities and collect household waste;

- produce and supply electricity and lay on supplies in the rural areas and around the town;

- build roads to the new districts, in particular to the industrial ones, with a view to promoting the private sector;

- improve the Praia Cartography and Surveying Department;

- reinforce the start-up and operation of the Praia technical school by providing technical assistance and running training schemes;

- give technical support to improve the departments and institutions responsible for running the projects and managing the instruments as part of a sectoral policy.

A protocol of intent on the EIB operations has also been signed and Cape Verde has said it hopes to present projects in the following areas for financing:

- transport: a Port of Mindelo modernisation programme;

- SME: SME promotion schemes;

- energy: electrical energy and water production and distribution projects.

The Cape Verdean Government has set out its regional cooperation priorities along three lines.

- Continuation of the anti-desertification and food security drives to reflect the guidelines laid down at the Praia meeting of October 1986, in connection with the other countries of West Africa. - Given its special geographical and cultural situation, Cape Verde hopes to get financing for cooperation on training, culture etc with other Portuguese-speaking nations.

- The same goes for the countries in the Caribbean, bearing in mind the similarity of these island countries’ tourist, transport and trade problems.

EEC-Cape Verde fisheries agreement

The Community and Cape Verde initialled an agreement on fishing off Cape Verde on 12 January 1990. This document, signed for an initial period of three years with the possibility of a two-year extension, means that Community vessels can now fish in Cape Verde’s fishing zone. It authorises 45 vessels - 21 tuna ships using seine-nets, 24 tuna canners and surface trawlers - to fish for highly migratory species, two bottom trawlers to fish for demersal species and two experimental ships to fish for cephalopods in Cape Verdean waters.

Financial compensation and the experimental fishing will give Cape Verde ECU 1950 000 over the three-year period. There will also be an ECU 500 000 scientific and technical programme and ECU 160 000-worth of study and practical training awards will be granted.

J.M.D.S.