Cape Verde

Cape Verde: population and cities

Population

Population

 According to Countryaah website, Cape Verde has around 550,000 residents. It should be noted that between 700,000 and 800,000 Cape Verdeans live in other countries such as the USA, France, Portugal or the Benelux countries.

Ethnic composition

Around 70% of the residents of Cape Verde are mulattos, around 28% black and the rest white and others.

Religious affiliation

Due to the long influence of Portugal, the country is strongly Christian. Around 90% of the residents are Catholic. The rest are Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses and followers of various natural religions.

Few Muslims live on the islands

National languages While the official language on Cape Verde is (high) Portuguese, the national language spoken is Cape Verde Creole (Krioulo), a creation of Portuguese and African dialects. The government of Cape Verde is currently very keen to make the Krioulo the official language and thus to displace Portuguese. The Krioulo has different variants, with the main differences between that of Santiago and that of Santo Antão. Sometimes the differences are so great that you can't understand each other at all. In contrast, the Krioulo of Santiago and that of Guinea-Bissau havegreat similarities. If you only travel to the Cape Verde Islands in English, you will have a bad chance of making yourself understood outside of hotels and upscale restaurants - not to mention German. Since a lot of Kapoverdians are illiterate, writing them down does not help.

Capital and other cities

Mindelo

Mindelo is the second largest in Cape Verde with around 70,000 residents and is located on the island of São Vicente. The cultural center of the country, with the Porto Grande, is not only the port of call for large cruise ships, but also the cultural (and a little bit the secret) capital of the island kingdom. Famous is the city's colorful carnival, which is somewhat reminiscent of the carnival of Brazil. The city is surrounded by mountains such as the Vigia Mountains, Monte Cara and Morro Branco.

Another characteristic is the Ilhéu dos Pássaros, an island at the entrance to the Porto Grande. It has an 82 meter high lighthouse.

Pedra Badejo

Pedra Badejo (also Santiago Mayor) spreads out on the east coast of the island of Santiago, a town with 10,000 residents. There is also a modern Catholic and the New Apostolic Church.

Praia

Praia, Portuguese for "beach", is the largest and the capital of Cape Verdes with around 125,000 residents. It is located on the island of Santiago and is the economic center of the archipelago. Coffee, sugar cane and tropical fruits are served from the city's port foreign shipped.

the city is also the center of the cape Verde fishing industry and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Santiago de Cabo Verde. the town is a remarkable contrast to the rest of the more conservative and traditional views Santiago island.

The quite cosmopolitan city should therefore offer the best opportunities to study the cultural differences in the country. Tourists will surely like to stick to the many show houses and also visit the Palace of Culture.

The ethnographic museum, the former presidential palace and the national historical archive are also recommended.

Santa Maria

The 17,000-resident town of Santa Maria is located on the island of Sal and is increasingly becoming the tourist center of the island. The third largest Cape Verdean city in the south of Sal is picturesquely located and famous for its booming tourism and is dominated by numerous new hotels.

Cape Verde: geography, map

Defined by DigoPaul, Cape Verde is located in the Atlantic about 600 km from the West African coast and about on the level of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. The ten islands of Cape Verde cover a total area of 4,033 km². Thereof:

• Fields and fields

  Only a few areas of the country are used as arable land or fields, especially for growing wine, coffee, but also fruit and vegetables.

  Because of the small area under cultivation, around 90% of the food requirements have to be imported. Due to the rainfall, the island of Santo Antão is relatively fertile. The residents call it an agricultural island.

• Desert

  A large part of the islands consists of sand and salt deserts. The island of Santiago can be described as a sand and salt desert.

• Mountains

  Many of the islands are very mountainous, so the island of Fogo consists almost entirely of the volcano "Pico do Fogo".

Due to its island location, Cape Verde does not have a common land border with any state.

The total length of the coast is around 965 km.

Tidal range in Praia

In Praia the mean tidal range is around 3 m. You can find detailed explanations of ebb and flow under tides, ebb and flow, general.

Compare

The world's highest tidal range can be found in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where it is up to 16 m, and at spring tide even over 20 m. The Bay of Fundy is located on the Atlantic Ocean between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which is called "Nova Scotia" in German and whose capital is Halifax. On the German North Sea coast it varies between 1 m and 3 m. In the western Baltic Sea, on the other hand, the tidal range is only 0.3 m, while it is barely noticeable in the eastern Baltic Sea.

Longitude and latitude

The Cape Verde Islands or the island state of Cape Verde extend over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):

You can find detailed information on this subject under: Geographical longitude and latitude.

Legal time

For Cape Verde, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time (without summer time) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. A minus sign means that it is earlier there and a plus sign that it is later than after CET:

More detailed explanations of the time can be found under: Time zones, time.

The highest point of the sun in Praia

The capital of Cape Verde is Praia, it lies at a north latitude of around φ = 15 °. However, since Praia lies between the north and south latitude, i.e. in the tropics, the sun is exactly vertically above the city twice a year, and always when the declination of the sun is just equal to the latitude of the city, i.e. 15 ° N is. This is roughly 33 days before June 21st and then again 33 days after June 21st. If the image point of the sun is more northerly than the observed latitude of 15 ° N, the sun is in the north at noon and not in the south as in Europe.

Mountains on the islands

The highest mountain in the country is the volcano "Pico do Fogo" on the island of the same name with a height of 2,829 m, the last eruption of which was in 1995.

The Atlantic

The Cape Verde - or Cape Verde Islands - are located in the middle of the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa.