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.

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.