Africa-Press – Cape verde. More and more, we are reducing the reasons for people to leave Santo Antão to live on other islands due to lack of opportunities. But this is a construction that takes time”, stressed Ulisses Correia e Silva, referring to several projects in the process of being launched and already underway that will change “the social and economic panorama” of the island and retain people in the region.
The Prime Minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, said this Sunday, in the city of Porto Novo, that “there are fewer and fewer reasons” for people to continue leaving Santo Antão for other islands “due to lack of opportunities”.
The head of the Government, who was speaking at the launch of the Monte Trigo integrated project, highlighted, among other projects, the expansion of the Porto Novo seaport, the new Santo Antão sewage treatment centre, water desalination for agriculture, the production of photovoltaic energy and the pozzolan industry.
“These are major projects with an impact on the economy of Santo Antão. We are talking about tourism, agriculture, energy and industry, which will generate jobs and wealth. We are creating conditions so that we can see Santo Antão as an island of opportunities”, stressed Correia e Silva, who assured that the Government is working to reduce the reasons that lead people to leave this island.
For the Prime Minister, what the Government is doing in Santo Antão is producing results, these are projects that have already been guaranteed and that envisage a socially and economically developed island in the coming years.
In recent decades, Santo Antão has lost thousands of people, most of them young people, a phenomenon that, according to the mayors, is putting the future of the island itself at risk, which had 48 thousand inhabitants in the 1980s, and currently has 37 thousand people.
The 2021 census, carried out by the National Statistics Institute (INE), indicates that Santo Antão was the island that lost the most population in the period 2010-2021 (around seven thousand people).
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