The Diplomat
Queen Letizia dedicated the second day of her trip to Cape Verde to visiting a Spanish Cooperation project in Praia, the country’s capital, to raise awareness about gender-based violence and the reintegration of victims.
Queen Letizia has been in Cape Verde since Monday for her first official trip to the country and her third cooperation trip to sub-Saharan Africa, following visits to Senegal in 2017 and Mozambique in 2019. The Queen, who is traveling with the State Secretary for International Cooperation, Eva María Granados, will conclude her visit to the African country this Thursday, March 27.
According to the Royal Household, Wednesday’s visit began in Praia, specifically at the Regina Silva Secondary School, with a visit to the project “Strengthening spaces and capacities for care, prevention, and reintegration of victims of gender-based violence. Awareness-raising activity for adolescents.”
Accompanied by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Government of Cape Verde, Miryam Vieira, and other local and national authorities, the Queen spoke with young people attending an awareness-raising workshop on gender-based violence and visited the Center before traveling from Nelson Mandela Airport to the island of San Vicente.
In San Vicente, Queen Letizia visited the project “Promoting a more inclusive and sustainable integrated fishing chain that fosters access to rights for women and youth on the coast” in the town of Mindelo, accompanied at all times by the Minister of the Sea, Jorge Santos, among others. She also visited the facilities of the NGO Paz y Desarrollo, strolled through the municipal market and the pier, inquiring about the stalls selling and processing fish, and stopped at a product display and chatted with fish farmers.
The purpose of the Queen’s trip is to learn about the work carried out by Spanish Cooperation in Cape Verde in the areas of gender equality, comprehensive development (reducing inequalities and localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the blue economy (sustainable use of marine resources).
This is the Queen’s tenth cooperation trip, reviving a tradition initiated by Queen Sofía in 1997. Previously, Queen Letizia traveled to Honduras and El Salvador (2015), Senegal (2017), the Dominican Republic and Haiti (2018), Mozambique (2019), Honduras again (2020), Paraguay (late 2021), Mauritania (May 2022), Colombia (June 2023), and Guatemala (June 2024).
The purpose of these visits is to support Spanish cooperation, learn firsthand about the work carried out by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID) and Spanish non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and verify the effectiveness of Spanish-funded projects and their direct impact on beneficiaries.
The next stop on the Queen’s trip was the Châ de Cricket neighborhood, where she visited a new project, “Food Security in Schools and Opportunities for Young Local Producers.” The project aims to contribute to the food and nutritional security of primary school students in six Cape Verde municipalities, located on the islands of São Vicente, Santo Antão, and Santiago, through the consumption of fruits and vegetables supplied by family farmers organized in a network to promote their professionalization, production, and market access, thus generating new income and the inclusion of rural youth and women in the agricultural value chain.
In the afternoon, at the Ocean Science Center in Mindelo, the Queen visited an exhibition of ongoing blue economy projects in Cape Verde, accompanied by the Minister of the Sea, Jorge Santos. The AECID (African American Development Bank) provides budgetary support to three projects in the Blue Economy sector: “Blue Earth: Resilience and Strengthening of the Coastal and Riverside Communities of the Islands of San Antonio and San Vicente,” “Promoting Entrepreneurship in the Blue Economy,” and “Enhancing the Value of Eight Historic Lighthouses through a Cultural and Tourist Route in Cape Verde.”
The Queen visited the Oceanographic Center laboratory, where she was briefed on aspects related to research for the sustainable fishing label and informed about the variety of activities related to blue economy projects. The visit to the Ocean Science Center in Mindelo concluded the Queen’s day, before she embarked on her return trip to Santiago Island.
