Cabo Verde Doesn’t Lack Businesses. It Has Businesses the Market Can’t Find.
There’s a phrase we still hear way too often in Cabo Verde’s business community: “Marketing isn’t a priority.”
Sometimes it shows up in different forms. “We need to focus on sales first.” “We’ll invest in marketing when we grow.” “We’re already on Instagram.” Or maybe the one that says the most: “People already know us.”
In a small market, where word of mouth carries serious weight and plenty of business relationships still start with someone sharing a WhatsApp contact, that mindset can work for a while. But a country that wants to compete globally can’t keep building businesses that are only discoverable by people who already know they exist.
And the numbers put that challenge into perspective.
Cabo Verde had 18,641 active businesses in 2024, employing 94,714 people and generating roughly CVE 437 billion in revenue. According to the World Bank and IFC’s private sector diagnostic, 73.6% of Cabo Verdean businesses are microenterprises, yet they account for only 3.5% of sales. MSMEs overall represent nearly 98% of formal businesses and around 55% of employment.
So we have businesses. A lot of them.
The real question is: how many are actually positioned to be discovered, considered, and chosen by someone who has never heard of them before?
In a tourism-driven economy, being invisible costs money
Picture someone planning a trip to Cabo Verde.
Before they ever land, they’re searching for where to stay, where to eat, what to do, where to rent a car, and which experiences are worth booking. They Google it. They check Maps. They read reviews. They compare websites, prices, and platforms.
Long before that customer arrives in Cabo Verde, part of their spending has already been decided. Now think about the Cabo Verdean business that could have captured some of that spend but never showed up in the search results. To that customer, the business basically doesn’t exist.
That’s a serious issue in an economy where tourism accounts for roughly 25% of GDP directly, rising to as much as 44% when indirect effects are included. Cabo Verde welcomed 981,354 tourists in 2024, and in 2025 accommodation establishments received around 1.25 million guests, 95.5% of them from abroad.
We have hundreds of thousands of potential customers arriving after researching and planning online, yet a significant share of local businesses still isn’t positioned to compete for that demand.
In tourism, 40% of businesses don’t offer their products through third-party platforms, while 30% don’t enable online booking through their own websites. The World Bank also found Cabo Verde present on only one of the four major international tourism marketplaces it analyzed, describing that gap as a competitive disadvantage.
This isn’t just a digital problem.
It’s a customer acquisition problem.
The tourists are coming. So is the money. But who’s capturing it?
There’s a contradiction in Cabo Verde’s tourism model that deserves more attention.
We’ve become increasingly successful at attracting international visitors, yet a significant part of the customer relationship remains in the hands of international intermediaries.
According to the IFC, three or four major international hotel chains account for around 90% of accommodation supply, while a single tour operator controls 47% of the national market, 52% in Sal, and 83% in Boa Vista. Independent hotels can generate around 80% of their business through international operators; among affiliated hotels, that dependence can reach 98%.
There’s nothing wrong with intermediaries. OTAs, tour operators, travel agencies, and marketplaces are part of the modern tourism funnel.
The problem starts when they stop being one acquisition channel and become the acquisition channel.
It’s like owning the store but paying someone else every single time a customer walks through the door.
That’s where marketing stops being “posting on social media” and starts being what it actually is: building demand, owning customer relationships, and creating direct paths to conversion.
“But we already have Facebook and Instagram.”
Great. But an Instagram account isn’t a digital strategy.
A business can post every day, rack up likes, and still be invisible at the exact moment someone is ready to buy.
A traveler searching “restaurant near me,” “boat tour Cabo Verde,” or “car rental Praia” isn’t necessarily looking for the brand with the prettiest feed. They’re trying to answer much more practical questions:
Can I find you? Do I understand what you offer? Do you look credible? What do other customers say? And can I book or buy without jumping through hoops?
An optimized Google Business Profile, accurate location and hours, customer reviews, strong photography, a functional website, English-language content, SEO, GEO, AEO, online booking, and visibility on the right platforms might sound like separate tactics.
Together, they form customer acquisition infrastructure.
Research by Ipsos cited by Travel Oregon found that businesses with complete information on Google were perceived as 2.7 times more reputable, were 70% more likely to attract an in-person visit, and 50% more likely to lead to a purchase.
Before customers buy the product, they buy confidence.
And today, a huge part of that trust-building happens before the first human interaction.
We still treat marketing like decoration
This might be the heart of the issue.
For years, we confused marketing with advertising. Then we confused marketing with social media. Now we’re at risk of confusing it with Reels.
Marketing starts way before the content calendar.
It starts with understanding who you’re trying to reach, what problem you solve for them, why they should choose you, where they discover brands, what objections might kill the conversion, and what they need to see before they trust you enough to spend.
In marketer language: it’s about the entire funnel, not just the content sitting at the top of it.
And some of Cabo Verde’s missed opportunities show exactly what happens when that piece is overlooked.
The IFC notes that yacht tourism remains constrained, among other factors, because international brokers have limited access to information about Cape Verdean marinas. The digital nomad program attracted only 194 applicants, against a target of 1,000 per year, with limited promotion identified as one of its weaknesses. Cultural tourism, meanwhile, accounts for only around 1% of total tourist spending.
We have culture, food, music, heritage, artists, craftspeople, and experiences people can’t get anywhere else.
What we don’t always have is the marketing infrastructure to turn that value into awareness, demand, bookings, and revenue.
An incredible cachupa that nobody can find is still incredible.
It’s just incredible for the people who already know where to get it.
Marketing can’t save a bad business. But being good isn’t a growth strategy either.
No campaign can permanently make up for a bad product or poor customer experience.
But the reverse is also true: a great product with zero visibility has very little commercial value.
The market doesn’t automatically reward the best company. It often rewards the company that knows how to combine a strong offer with discoverability, distribution, reputation, trust, and a clear path to conversion.
At Origami, we believe communication should be built with strategy, rigor, and intention. Not because brands need to create more noise, but because good businesses need a clear bridge between the value they create and the people willing to pay for it.
Cabo Verde is becoming increasingly visible to the world. Tourism is growing, the diaspora remains economically significant, and consumers are increasingly digital.
So maybe the debate about whether businesses should invest in marketing is already outdated.
The question that matters now is:
When the world searches for Cabo Verde, how many Cabo Verdean businesses will actually show up?
Comments