Why Cabo Verde Can't Feed Itself

Cabo Verde's €200m Food Trap: Why an Island Nation Can't Feed Itself

Cabo Verde spent more than €200m importing food in 2024. That's double what it spent in 2020. For a country of 550,000 people, the bill keeps rising while local production barely budges.

The numbers tell a blunt story. The country imports 80 to 90 per cent of the food its people eat. Domestic agriculture supplies 20 to 30 per cent at most. Food imports equal 11.7 per cent of GDP and comprise 25 per cent of the consumer price index basket.

This isn't policy failure. It's geography, climate and economics colliding on a handful of volcanic islands with minimal rainfall and almost no arable land.

The Import Bill Won't Stop Growing

In 2024, processed food represented 22.9 per cent of total merchandise imports. Primary food products added 6.1 per cent. Consumer goods—heavily food-related—made up 43.3 per cent.

Processed food imports rose 2.2 per cent in 2024 after climbing 2.5 per cent in 2023. Primary food imports fell 8.3 per cent in 2024, following a 4.2 per cent increase the year before. The decline likely reflects falling global commodity prices rather than reduced consumption.

Consumer goods imports jumped 9 per cent in price terms in the second quarter of 2025. The trade deficit hit 23bn Cape Verdean escudos in that quarter alone.

The pattern is clear: Cabo Verde buys what it cannot grow. And it cannot grow much.

What the Islands Cannot Produce

Meat dependency is stark. Local production covers 36 per cent of consumption. The other 64 per cent is imported. Poultry is worse—domestic production meets just 11 per cent of demand.

Even for livestock that can be raised locally—beef, pork, goat, sheep—national production covers only 73 per cent of needs. The country still imports nearly a third of these meats despite having grazing animals.

In 2014, Cabo Verde imported 4.9m eggs and 14,476 tonnes of powdered milk. More recent figures aren't available, but nothing suggests the dependency has eased.

Fresh produce tells a more complex story. Between 2002 and 2011, the country imported an average of 20,819 tonnes of fruits and vegetables annually, valued at 1.15bn escudos. Vegetables made up 80 per cent of that weight.

But dependency varies wildly by product. Data from 2009 shows:

Onions: 49 per cent imported (2,727 tonnes)
Cabbage: 1 per cent imported (110 tonnes)
Peppers: 7 per cent imported (134 tonnes)
Tomatoes: 2 per cent imported (152 tonnes)
Bananas: effectively zero imports (3 tonnes against 5,200 tonnes consumed)

Certain crops thrive where water exists. Bananas, tomatoes, cabbages grow successfully in specific microclimates. But even onions—a hardy staple requiring minimal water—must be imported in large quantities because local production can't meet demand.

By 2015, fruit production had improved. Local output covered 96 per cent of the country's 23,138-tonne fruit consumption, with just 927 tonnes imported. Cabo Verde stopped importing bananas after 2009. Local mango, papaya and avocado production replaced imports.

This proves agriculture can work—in narrow circumstances, for specific crops, where water allows. It doesn't prove the country can feed itself.

Fish Imports in a Nation Surrounded by Ocean

Cabo Verde imported approximately $70m worth of fish and fish products in 2023. This seems absurd for an archipelago with rich fishing grounds.

In 2019, the breakdown was revealing: nearly $1.5m in frozen shrimp, $1.6m in frozen fish fillets, and close to $3m in smoked and dried fish and shellfish. These are processed, high-value products that hotels want.

Artisanal fishing serves local markets. But processing capacity is limited. Of the roughly 19,000 tonnes of fish processed and exported in 2024, only 20 per cent used local raw materials. Frescomar, a major processing facility, imports over 85 per cent of its raw material needs.

The country catches fish, exports some, imports more expensive processed fish, and still can't meet demand. It's economically perverse but logistically inevitable given infrastructure constraints.

Tourism Makes Everything Worse

Hotels and resorts import 80 per cent of their food and beverages. Only 5 to 10 per cent of hotel food comes from local sources. The largest hotels on Sal and Boa Vista consumed about 11,000 tonnes of perishable goods in 2018. That figure was projected to rise 19 per cent by 2024.

Tourists account for 17 to 20 per cent of total domestic consumption of meat, fish and fruits. They're eating imported food on islands surrounded by ocean and dotted with farms.

Hotels reject roughly 30 per cent of locally sourced fresh products due to quality problems. This isn't pickiness. All-inclusive resorts operate on razor-thin margins. Inconsistent supply, variable quality and spoilage from poor logistics create unacceptable risk.

Tourism generated $5m in imports of frozen shrimp and fish fillets in 2019 alone—premium products aimed at resort guests and wealthy residents.

The economic logic is brutal. Tourism brings foreign exchange. That forex pays for food imports for everyone. But tourism itself drives import demand higher because hotels can't source locally at the quality and consistency required.

When Prices Spike, People Go Hungry

Import dependency transmits global price shocks directly to consumers. When commodity markets spiked in 2022, food inflation in Cabo Verde hit 15.7 per cent. By March 2023, year-on-year food inflation reached 17.9 per cent.

Food comprises 25 per cent of the consumer price index. For low-income households, it's a bigger share. When global prices surge, Cabo Verdeans have no domestic alternative. They pay more or eat less.

In June 2022—at the inflation peak—9 per cent of the population faced food insecurity. That's roughly 50,000 people unable to reliably access adequate food.

Prices moderated as global markets cooled. The FAO food price index fell 13.8 per cent in 2023 and another 2 per cent in 2024. Cabo Verde's food inflation declined to 8.9 per cent in 2023. But it remained elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels, and the underlying vulnerability hasn't changed.

The next global shock—whether from conflict, climate disaster or pandemic—will hit Cabo Verde immediately and hard.

The Dependency Extends to Seeds and Inputs

The country doesn't just import food. It imports the inputs to grow food.

Pesticides and fertilisers require prior authorisation for import and are regulated, indicating total reliance on foreign sources. Seeds and seedlings need approval from the National Seed and Seedling Service before import.

Cabo Verde cannot produce the chemical inputs modern agriculture requires. It cannot develop seed varieties suited to local conditions because it lacks research capacity. Every attempt to increase domestic production depends on imported inputs.

This creates a double dependency. To reduce food imports, the country must increase agricultural imports of seeds, fertiliser and equipment. The trade deficit improves only if increased local production exceeds the cost of additional inputs. Given water scarcity and land constraints, that's unlikely at scale.

Why Dependency Cannot Be Broken

Only 10 per cent of Cabo Verde's land is arable. Of that, just 8.6 per cent can be irrigated. Rainfall is irregular. Droughts are periodic. Climate change is making conditions worse.

The country lacks scale. A population of 550,000 spread across nine inhabited islands cannot support large-scale commercial agriculture. Transport between islands is unreliable. Cold storage is inadequate. The logistics to move perishables from producing islands to consuming islands doesn't exist at the standard required.

Agriculture that does exist is overwhelmingly subsistence farming. Family-owned farms represented 99.87 per cent of holdings in 2004. These grow food for household consumption with modest surpluses sold locally. They cannot supply hotels needing tonnes of produce weekly to consistent specifications.

Investment has been minimal. Between 2020 and 2023, cumulative foreign direct investment in agro-processing totalled just €25m—one-eighth of the annual food import bill.

The government offers generous incentives: 30 per cent investment tax credits, 50 per cent profit exemptions, duty-free equipment imports. Investment remains constrained by the same factors limiting production: water scarcity, land constraints, logistics failure.

The Circular Trap

Cabo Verde imports 80 per cent of consumption products. It's highly susceptible to global food and energy price swings. The government acknowledges it cannot produce locally the quantity of food the population needs.

Tourism provides foreign exchange to pay for imports. But tourism drives import demand higher because hotels source almost everything abroad. When tourism collapsed during Covid-19, foreign exchange dried up, making it harder to pay for food imports even as domestic demand remained.

The system works only as long as tourists keep coming and ships keep delivering. When either stops, food security evaporates quickly.

Between 2000 and 2004, agricultural imports averaged 14.78 per cent of GDP. Between 2006 and 2009, they fell slightly to 13.18 per cent. The 11.7 per cent figure from 2022 suggests modest improvement. But the underlying dependency is unchanged.

The economy has grown. Tourism has expanded. The population has increased. Yet the proportion of food that must be imported remains stubbornly high. This points to structural factors, not policy failures.

No Way Out

Small island states face inherent disadvantages. Limited land, water scarcity, geographic isolation and lack of scale make food self-sufficiency economically irrational for most products. Comparative advantage points toward specialisation in services—tourism—and using export earnings to buy food.

Cabo Verde has followed that logic. Tourism is the largest foreign exchange earner. Remittances from the diaspora add more. These finance food imports more efficiently than trying to grow wheat or raise cattle on volcanic rock with minimal rainfall.

But efficiency creates vulnerability. The country is one supply shock away from crisis. One bad tourist season away from forex shortages. One conflict disrupting shipping lanes away from empty shelves.

Technology and investment can push domestic production from 20 per cent toward 30 or perhaps 35 per cent. But Cabo Verde will never feed itself from its own land. The question isn't whether to import food. It's how to keep earning enough foreign exchange to pay the bill.

That makes food security entirely dependent on tourism. Which means an archipelago's ability to feed its people depends on Europeans wanting beach holidays. It's a precarious arrangement.

The €200m food import bill will keep growing. And there's nothing Cabo Verde can do about it.