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This Entrepreneur Is Engaging The Diaspora With Cabo Verde

This article is more than 5 years old.

As part of the Island Innovation series, today I am interviewing Pedro Lopes from the Cabo Verde islands off the west coast of Africa. Pedro was born to a Cabo Verdean father in Portugal and lived around Europe for work and studies before moving back to the islands to pursue his dream of developing a Cabo Verde 2.0 and creating a solid entrepreneurship space there. He has a degree in International Relations and postgraduate degrees in Strategic Marketing Communication and Conflict Resolution.

Pedro is known for organizing the 1st TEDx of Cabo Verde and for being the founder of Generation B-Bright, a youth empowerment organization. In 2017 he won the national prize of “Somos Cabo Verde - Os melhores do Ano” (“We are Cabo Verde - Best of the Year”) in the category of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and was selected by the US Government to participate in the YALI Program. In 2018 he was selected by MIPAD as one of the Most Influential People in the World of Afro Descent in the world under 40 years old and was chosen by former President Obama to be part of his first leadership initiative in Africa. At the age of 31, he became the youngest member of the current Government of Cabo Verde by being appointed as Secretary of State for Innovation and Technical Training.

Pedro Lopes

James Ellsmoor: Wow that is quite the resume – congratulations on all of your achievements. Can you tell us more about how you are practically encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship in Cabo Verde?

Pedro Lopes: Thank you so much, James, for this opportunity. On a professional level I was part of the team that organized the acclaimed event – Africa Innovation Summit – that this year took place in Rwanda but the first edition was in Cabo Verde, an unbelievable initiative with over 300 stakeholders including policymakers, entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers, academics, and investors from over 35 countries.

I have always actively participated in civil society either alongside other Cabo Verdeans that were studying abroad or were born in the diaspora and were back in Cabo Verde. This experience helped us to identify the lack of skills in our youth and lack of connection with the rest of the world following the trends of digital markets to succeed in the global market.

Therefore, we created a youth organization that developed soft skills and promoted workshops on issues related to innovation and entrepreneurship without any cost and on top of that we started using the communication channels used by young people (social media) to encourage them to be responsible for their own future, reinforcing their skills and always keep an open-minded attitude with an eye of what is changing in the rest of the world. The acceptance of the B-Bright Generation was fantastic, with our sessions being completely sold out. We showed to many people that yes, our Youth wants to be connected with the rest of the world and yes, they want to be prepared to surf the wave of innovation.

After one year I wanted to something that caught everyone's attention, and I decided to bring an international event to my country - TEDx - to show the strength of Cabo Verdean youth, of civil society and to show that it doesn’t matter where we come from what it matters is where we are going. We are proud to be from small islands but we can achieve big things, the size of our territory doesn’t have to define our actions. We brought our diaspora to participate in it, we live streamed it and we had thousands and thousands of Cabo Verdeans that live abroad watching the event in their laptops in the US, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and so many other places.

TEDx was considered such a success that we won the award in the acclaimed awards “We are Cabo Verde" in the category of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Currently, as a member of the Government, my goal is to serve the citizens of Cabo Verde and implementing policies in the two fields: Innovation, related with Digital Economy (startups, entrepreneurship ecosystem, telecommunications) and Employment more specifically with vocational training. The goal is to put Innovation at the service of Cabo Verdeans helping us to bridge the gap between the most developed countries and our country with technology and with an innovative mindset, to achieve that, we have a strategy to use our geographical position to become a tech hub for our sub-region and also to attract our bright diaspora to return to Cabo Verde and develop innovative projects or connect with the youth that lives here.

James Ellsmoor: The “Brain Drain” has historically been a real problem for Cabo Verde, as qualified individuals have left the islands for the US and Europe. Now there are more Cabo Verdeans abroad than at home and this could be seen as an asset for the nation. How is the government trying to use the diaspora as a resource for growth?

Pedro Lopes: It is true that we have more Cabo Verdeans living abroad than at home and we want to take advantage of that. Recently we created an exciting initiative called “CV Next”. This initiative of the Government of Cabo Verde, in partnership with innovative national companies led by our youth, has three main objectives:

  1. To give visibility to and celebrate what is done best in Cabo Verde and what is best done by our diaspora in the area of Innovation;
  2. To bring to the discussion these themes inviting our experts living abroad to participate in the CV Next events, bringing along their friends and exposing them to young Cabo Verdeans living in the islands so that together we can exchange ideas, motivate young people to undertake and innovate to create a Cabo Verde 2.0, a modern country and prepared for the future;
  3. Allowing our startups to be present at international events and to meet in-person our diaspora, visiting their companies and building a relationship that we believe the country will benefit from in the mid to long-term.

With CV Next we brought in Tim Rowe from Cambridge Innovation Center and Travis Sheridan from CIC Venture Cafe Global Institute – friends of Cabo Verde through their colleague Sidi Gomes, a bright young engineer from Cabo Verde living in the US. John Vicente, CTO of Intel for Internet of Things, the typical success story of our diaspora and we guaranteed an opportunity for some young people to attend the AIS in Kigali. We want to get to a stage in the future where we will no longer need the Government to connect our diaspora to our youth, because international companies and young local startups will create that dynamic by themselves. The gains are immeasurable.

Pedro Lopes

James Ellsmoor: Tell us more about Cabo Verde and why you love the islands. What do you want readers to know about the country?

Pedro Lopes: Cabo Verde is the place to be! James, I invite you and the readers to dream with me: imagine a country located between the Americas, Africa and with sun all year round, with beautiful beaches, a safe place, a place that is home to more musicians per square kilometer than any other country in the world, with a lively nightlife, with strong democratic and well established institutions, that never had war, with beautiful and unique people.

What makes Cabo Verdeans special you might ask? Being grateful for life, the huge smile of our children, a will to be joyful and also a sense of embracing others and making them feel part of our culture even if they have no connection to Cabo Verde - that is something unique for every globetrotter.

James Ellsmoor: Which sectors do you see as emerging in Cabo Verde’s future? How are new technology and communications creating opportunities?

Pedro Lopes: The tourism sector: last year we had 716,000 tourists and registered more than 4.5 million nights. Soon we will reach 1 million tourists per year. We need agribusiness to supply the hotel chains. Renewable energy will also be a profitable business if you consider the price you pay for electricity in Cabo Verde.

But I would like to focus on technology and the digital economy: nowadays in a tiny remote island in the Atlantic it is possible to call a cab with an app (TaxiJá by LifeSolutions), make online payments such as your electricity bill and so many others (PagaLi by ISONE), you can listen to music from African music in an app specially designed to promote African Artists (Muska by Bonako), you can order food online from more than 15 restaurants (Ifome), you can buy tickets for concerts/parties/sports events with an app (Passafree by Ihaba) and you can use an app that helps you organize your waiting lines by providing visitors/customers with an easy ordering method (Nha Bex).

All of this has been developed by young Cabo Verdeans. They know the technology is changing the world and they want to be part of it, finding solutions to the problems of their country and also to provide comfortable solutions to their users not just in Cabo Verde but in other parts of Africa, for example, Muska is soon going to launch in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We already sell our e-government solutions to other countries including Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea Bissau. This is the only path to follow because our local market is so small (Cabo Verde has just 500,000 people divided between 9 islands) but I believe Cabo Verde can leapfrog its way into the future. Digital technologies have a specific capacity to unlock economies of small countries, just see the example of Israel, Estonia and Rwanda.

James Ellsmoor: The population of Cabo Verde is incredibly young – the median age is just 23! That must make for an exciting environment to work in entrepreneurship?

Pedro Lopes: Yes, young and literate! We have a rate of literacy of nearly 90%. Our challenge is to make sure that everyone will have the opportunity to find a decent job or to create their own job but also prepare young people with the skills to face the future and the fast pace of the world.

For me, what is essential in this phase is to build a community where all parts give their contribution to a modern Cabo Verde, what I call a Cabo Verde 2.0, bringing together civil society, private companies, young talents and universities. The role of the Government should be the glue to put together all these pieces in this early stage, creating the infrastructures as we are doing and attracting Cabo Verdeans or other bright minds that chose our beautiful islands to live to make their dreams came true here, promoting policies that can play in their favor.

Luckily, we have a Prime Minister, Ulisses Correia e Silvathat bets on innovation and sees the need for technology. Until recently having so many young people in a country was seen as a constraint, but nowadays we see it as an opportunity. In Cabo Verde we are creating the conditions conducive to technological diffusion: we are investing in the infrastructure, we are creating the right regulatory environment and we are improving our educational system to be more ICT friendly. I believe that in 20 years we will look at these days and we will remember them as one of the most exciting periods in Cabo Verdean history, and that is the reason why I challenge young people to be part of it. We want our talent to stay here and we want to reverse the brain drain.

I recently had the fantastic opportunity to personally meet and discuss some ideas with President Obama in Johannesburg. He told me: young people can have a comfortable life if they go to Europe or the US but if they ambitious enough and are willing to take the risk and undergo some of the challenges and hardships, their odds of being transformative, of shaking things up are going to be higher here than in other places, so we want our people to remain here and to build a Cabo Verde 2.0, the future of our country is in their hands.

James Ellsmoor: What’s next for you? What exciting projects in Cabo Verde should we be following over the next year?

Pedro Lopes: Personally, I want to keep having an impact on people and inspiring young people to break barriers, to go beyond the physical space of Cabo Verde, we need to encourage new ideas and give visibility to the projects led by our youth that contribute to a country and a continent facing the future.

I also want to keep connecting Cabo Verde to our diaspora more specific with Cabo Verdeans that are occupying top positions in the top ICT companies and in top universities worldwide, we need to connect them with the youth that lives in Cabo Verde, they are more than happy to be part of the development of Cabo Verde and our youth can benefit immensely from their network, guidance and know-how.

4G will be available until the end of the year and digital terrestrial television is already a reality. We recently built a modern data center, we are building tech parks in our main islands (São Vicente and Santiago) and we have a program to finance projects called “Young StartUp-Pro-Empresa”. We are also preparing our kids to a modern world teaching them robotics and coding at a very young age with the project WebLab - a partnership between the Ministry of Education and our operational unit of the inter-ministerial commission for Innovation and Information Society (NOSi). The goal is to put Innovation at the service of Cape Verdeans helping us to bridge the gap between the most developed countries and our country with technology and with an innovative mindset.

James Ellsmoor: Can you recommend a book or film for anyone wanting to learn more about Cabo Verde?

Pedro Lopes: I suggest the author Germano Almeida and his classic book “The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araujo”. It tells the story of a successful entrepreneur, it is a humorous and at the same time nostalgic book that shows the social conventions and habits of Cabo Verde.

But Cabo Verde is all about music, therefore I recommend the new age singers such as Mayra Andrade, Elida Almeida, Dino D´Santiago, Sara Alhinho and Hilario Silva that continue the heritage of our barefoot diva, the notorious Cesaria Evóra and, in my opinion, our greatest singer ever: Ildo Lobo.

For movies, I recommend “Dois Irmãos” that was recently released, an indie movie “Sukuru” directed by Samira Cruz but keep an eye on the productions of Kriolscope, a young startup specialized in video content creation. Reference to an innovative company called GreenStudio that want to create/aggregate African content in Cabo Verde and make the distribution in the US.

James Ellsmoor: Thank you so much for sharing your work – it is really exciting to see how quickly things are moving. Cabo Verde is such a fascinating place and I cannot wait to visit at some point!

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