Cape Verde

Cape Verde has experienced sustained growth over the last decade due to tourism, remittances from the diaspora, foreign direct investment and official development assistance in addition to sound policies controlling the deficit and public debt. There were significant improvements in most of the country’s human development indicators, which are among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of the few countries in Africa which is on target to reach all the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals, having obtained the status of middle-income country in 2008.

Cape Verde is strongly committed to achieving universal coverage in social security, through working on the implementation of a social protection floor, which entails the gradual extension of social insurance (vertical approach) and the provision of basic non-contributory benefits (horizontal approach).

The country’s social security system consists of three regimes: social assistance, mandatory social protection and complementary social protection. Social assistance (non-contributory social protection) covers all the residents living in situations of vulnerability and economic need through the allocation of social benefits (risk, social support and solidarity benefits), income support and solidarity. Mandatory social protection (contributory) covers employed workers and independent workers as well as their families, and follows an insurance model financed by contributions from the workers themselves and their employers. Benefits are allocated according to  illness, maternity, work injury and occupational diseases, invalidity, old age and death, and additionally as compensation for family expenses. The complementary social protection system aims to strengthen the coverage provided by the mandatory social protection regime and membership in the program is voluntary. The social security system also includes the health system and a variety of social assistance programmes relating to education, housing, food, nutrition, and support for the disabled, among others.

The main public institutions responsible for social protection programs are the National Centre for Social Pensions (CNPS) and the National Social Security Institute (INPS). The health system is administered by the Ministry of Health and other programs are administered by the National Poverty Reduction Programme (PNLP), the FICASE (social protection to support education), the Directorate-General of Social Solidarity (DGSS) of the Ministry of Youth, Employment and Human Resources Development, and local governments and NGOs.

In the last decade, Cape Verde has adopted legislative measures addressing the inclusion of self-employed and domestic workers, the regime of sickness and maternity, the extension of the employed workers scheme, and the creation of a single scheme for civil servants. In the field of management, there have been some remarkable advances, including progress in the automation process of social pension’s management and the consolidation of a national administrative structure. There was also substantial progress made in administrative modernization through information technologies, institutional reorganization, review of administrative processes and increasing the network of agencies. This set of improvements allowed for the extension of social security coverage (contributory and non-contributory) to levels well above the average in sub-Saharan Africa.