Cape Verde

The struggle

Cape Verde was uninhabited until Portugal settled it in the fifteenth century as an Atlantic slaving entrepôt, and colonial neglect produced famines that killed tens of thousands into the 1940s. Its liberation was won jointly with Guinea-Bissau through Amílcar Cabral's PAIGC, though no war was fought on the islands. Independence came on 5 July 1975; the planned union with Guinea-Bissau ended in 1980.

Key people

• Amílcar Cabral

  1924–1973

  Cape Verdean founder of the PAIGC

• Aristides Pereira

  1923–2011

  First president of Cape Verde

• Pedro Pires

  born 1934

  Liberation commander and later president