Living in Cape Verde

Cape Verde is a small island economy that leans on tourism, and that shapes both the work and the wage. Pay is moderate and taxes take little, but with costs around the middle the spare at month's end is modest rather than generous. English turns up mainly in the tourist trade, while Portuguese is the working language elsewhere, and that limits where a newcomer fits. Breaking in is hard on a small island, where openings are few and often already spoken for.

Cape Verde's migration runs outward, and along old Atlantic ties. About 146.4K Cape Verdeans live abroad, a diaspora that has grown 26% over the past decade — far more than the small foreign-born population at home. The largest community, 76.8K, is in Portugal, the former colonial power and a natural language link, followed by France and Angola.