Religious freedom is hard-wired into the constitution of Cape Verde with  religious persecution acknowledged as a crime for which the guilty may spend between 3 months and 3 years behind bars.

Catholicism is the main religion of Cape Verde with around 85% of the populace claiming to be Roman Catholics centering in the dioceses of Mindelo and Santiago de  Cabo Verde.  Other religions reported in the country are Protestants including Evangelists and Adventists, Mormons and Bahá’í.

There is a small but growing Muslim community, many of which are  Senegalese traders or other immigrants from North Africa and around 1% of Cape Verdeans are atheists who profess no religious belief at all.

Cape Verde is one of the eligible countries from which undergraduate students can apply for an OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) Scholarship Award.

The scholarship is intended to support an undergraduate student through his or her higher education with an award of up to US$100,000 spread over a maximum of two years.

To be eligible the applicant must be between 23 and 32 and a graduating student with a Baccalaureate from a four-year, accredited college/university, or its equivalent.

For other eligibility criteria and to learn more about this sponsorship opportunity please visit the OPIC website.

A flight from Copenhagen to Cape Verde was forced to amke an emergency landing in Casablanca, Morocco yesterday while cabin crew extinguished a small fire.

All 239 passengers disembarked while Danish company  Star Tours set about organising alternative transport to their final destination. No-one was hurt and no reason for the fire has been announced.

The 2009 Index of Economic Freedom ranked Cape Verde 77th in the scale of overall economic freedoms. This is an improvement of 3.4% and places Cape Verde in the ‘Mostly Free’ bracket.

The Index combines several comparative measures to assess an individuals financial freedom and economic liberty as described in the FAQ pages of the report.

The highest form of economic freedom provides an absolute right of property ownership, fully realized freedoms of movement for labor, capital, and goods, and an absolute absence of coercion or constraint of economic liberty beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself. In other words, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, and that freedom is both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state.

During his recent trip to Havana, PM Jose Maria Pereira Neves announced that the Cape Verde government would consider opening a medical faculty to train doctors and medical specialists with the help of Cuban expertise.

There are approximately 60 Cubans currently working at a professional level in Cape Verde, 47 of these are in the health sector so this initiative could be expected to increase these numbers.

The origins of the Cape Verdean Funaná may be shrouded in mystery and it may have been seen as a low form of entertainment- peasant music – by the moneyed and travelled few but there is no doubt that the music stirs the soul and livens up any party.

If you are travelling to Cape Verde on holiday you can expect your heart and hips to have a good workout at least once during the trip…

The Economic Regulation Agency (ARE) had initially indicated to news agency A Semana Online that fuel prices would be reduced from January 20th however with conditions favouring an earlier drop, the costs of diesel went down yesterday from 125 to 112.4 escudos per litre.

The idea of using fog nets to harvest fresh drinking water is not new. It is used quite successfully in countries such as Nepal, Guatemala, Chile and others where fresh water is at a premium or the purification and desalination of available water is prohibitively costly for local residents.

Fog nets have been considered for Cape Verde before. In the 1960’s Portugese engineers looked into the possibility of using fog nets to capture potable water and ten years later, a group of Dutch companies revisited the idea.

Neither of these projects or any subsequent ones seemed to stick. That is until 2005 when a fog net system was set up for families of Serra Malagueta on Santiago island. Previously reliant on fresh water being trucked to them during the dry season at a cost of 2 cents (US) per litre, the fog net families can now ‘harvest’ their own drinking water.

Despite the great boon the access to clean water has on the lives of these families, there are objections. Some say tourists will object to the sight of the fog nets and find them ugly but as water engineer Antonia Sabino says, ‘The objective of the project is to produce water to give people to drink. Not to take pictures.’

Of course, digging up the national park to lay miles of water pipes would be a damn sight uglier so I guess the tourists should just be happy that the local community is getting fresh water.

For more information on this particular Cape Verde project please see the complete Fog Harvesting article at Africanloft.com.

For more on Fog Nets and communities where they are in use, visit Fog Quest, a charity which focusses on fog collection and rainwater harvesting

As reported in Macau Hub, foreign investment in Cape Verde almost doubled through 2008.

The good news was announced by Cabo Verde Investimentos which stated that 19 investment projects were approved in 2008 representing an increase of 46% on the previous year.

The actual amount of foreign  investment almost doubled  from 1.149 billion euros in 2007 to 2.639 billion euros last year.

See the article on Macau Hub for more details of investments by islands and projects expected to launch in 2009.

Tourism accounted  for 99% of total FDI in 2008 as compared to 97% percent the previous year and interestingly significant growth was seen in investment from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland.

Here are the dates for this year’s public holidays in Cape Verde

1 Jan – New Year’s Day
20 Jan – Heroes’ Day
24 Feb – Carnival
25 Feb Ash Wednesday
1 May Labour Day
19 May Municipal Day
5 Jul Independence Day
15 Aug Assumption (Day of Our Lady of Grace)
12 Sep National Day
1 Nov All Saints’ Day
25 Dec Christmas Day