Cape Verde Trivia
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60 free Cape Verde trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Cape Verde, officially Cabo Verde, is a horseshoe of ten volcanic islands 570 km off West Africa that was uninhabited until the Portuguese arrived in the 1460s. It grew rich on the slave trade, starved through centuries of drought, sent whalers to New England, and now counts almost twice as many citizens abroad as at home. It also gave the world morna, the barefoot diva Cesária Évora and the name for the biggest Atlantic hurricanes. This quiz covers geography (Santiago, Sal, Fogo's volcano, Barlavento and Sotavento), history (Cidade Velha, Darwin's first stop, Amílcar Cabral and independence in 1975), symbols and money (why the flag has ten stars, the euro-pegged escudo), culture and food (morna and funaná, cachupa, grogue, Kriolu) and sport (the Blue Sharks' 2026 World Cup, the first Olympic medal). Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages before publishing.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many islands make up the Cape Verde archipelago?
Ten
Ten islands make up the group: nine are inhabited, while Santa Luzia is empty, and eight islets lie besides.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Cape Verde?
Praia
Praia, whose name means 'beach' in Portuguese, replaced Ribeira Grande, now Cidade Velha, as capital in 1770; its plateau district, the Platô, holds the presidential palace.
Q 03Cape Verde is named after a peninsula on the coast of which African country?
Senegal
The name comes from Cap-Vert, the peninsula at Dakar in Senegal that is mainland Africa's westernmost point, which Portuguese sailors named the 'green cape' in 1444.
Q 04Which colonial power settled the then-uninhabited islands in the 1460s and ruled until independence?
Portugal
Portugal's navigators reached the islands around 1460 and settled Ribeira Grande from 1462; Portuguese rule lasted more than five centuries until independence.
Q 05Cape Verde became independent on 5 July of which year?
1975
Independence came on 5 July 1975, fourteen months after the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 toppled Lisbon's dictatorship; the PAIGC then governed both Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.
Q 06Which revolutionary, assassinated in 1973, founded the PAIGC that led Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau to independence?
Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Cabral, an agronomist born in Bafatá to Cape Verdean parents, was shot in Conakry on 20 January 1973; Sal's international airport carries his name.
Q 07Cesária Évora, Cape Verde's most famous singer, was known by what nickname?
The Barefoot Diva
The Barefoot Diva performed without shoes in solidarity with the poor, smoked on stage, won a Grammy in 2004 and gave her name to São Vicente's airport.
Q 08Which melancholy song genre, made famous by Cesária Évora, is considered Cape Verde's national music?
Morna
Morna, usually sung in Creole to guitar, cavaquinho and violin, joined UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in December 2019.
Q 09Cape Verde's flag shows a ring of yellow stars representing what?
The archipelago's islands
The archipelago's islands are the stars' meaning, one for each; the flag was adopted in 1992, replacing a green-yellow-red design with a black star, and its blue stands for ocean and sky.
Q 10Cape Verde's currency, the escudo, has been pegged to which currency since 1999?
The euro
The euro has anchored the escudo at 110.265 since 1999, the year the euro was born; the 1998 peg had been to the Portuguese escudo.
Q 11Cachupa, the national dish, is a slow-cooked stew based on which two staples?
Corn (hominy) and beans
Corn (hominy) and beans simmer for hours with vegetables and fish or meat; fried leftovers, cachupa refogada, are a classic breakfast topped with a fried egg.
Q 12Grogue, Cape Verde's traditional spirit, is distilled from what?
Sugarcane juice
Sugarcane juice pressed in a trapiche is fermented and distilled into grogue, much of it on the northern islands; mixed with lime and molasses it becomes ponche.
Q 13Pico do Fogo, Cape Verde's highest point at 2,829 m, is what?
An active volcano
Q 21Roughly how many Cape Verdeans live abroad compared with the population at home?
Almost double
Almost double: estimates put the diaspora near a million, against roughly half a million at home, with big communities in Massachusetts, Lisbon, Rotterdam and Luxembourg.
Q 22The first wave of Cape Verdean immigrants to Massachusetts in the 1840s came to work in which industry?
Whaling
Whaling ships out of New Bedford and Nantucket recruited crews from the islands, and many settled in southeastern Massachusetts, later taking up cranberry picking and mill work.
Q 23A "Cape Verde-type hurricane" is one that does what?
Pico do Fogo is an active volcano that erupted in 1995 and again from November 2014 to February 2015, burying the villages of Portela and Bangaeira inside its caldera.
Q 14Which is the largest and most populous of the Cape Verde islands, home to the capital?
Santiago
Santiago holds more than half the population and the capital; Ribeira Grande, settled there in 1462, was the first town in the islands.
Q 15The trade winds divide Cape Verde's islands into which two named groups?
Barlavento (windward) and Sotavento (leeward)
Barlavento (windward) and Sotavento (leeward) are the northern and southern groups; Sal and São Vicente lie windward, Fogo and the largest island leeward.
Q 16Cidade Velha became Cape Verde's first World Heritage Site in 2009 for being what?
The first European colonial settlement in the tropics
UNESCO listed Cidade Velha as the first European colonial settlement in the tropics; founded as Ribeira Grande in 1462, it grew rich on the slave trade before raiders ruined it.
Q 17Which English privateer sacked Ribeira Grande, the old capital, twice in 1585?
Francis Drake
Francis Drake's fleet landed on the main island in November 1585 and burned Ribeira Grande; a French raid under Jacques Cassard in 1712 finished the town off.
Q 18Cape Verde was the first port of call for which famous scientific ship in January 1832?
HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin
HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, anchored off the capital's harbour on 16 January 1832 after Tenerife refused the ship landing; Darwin's geology notes there helped launch his career.
Q 19Which port city on São Vicente is Cape Verde's cultural capital, famous for its carnival?
Mindelo
Mindelo grew as a coaling station for British steamers from 1838 around Porto Grande bay; its carnival blends Portuguese and Brazilian traditions.
Q 20Cape Verdean Creole (Kriolu) holds what distinction among the world's creole languages?
It is the oldest one still living
Kriolu is held to be the oldest living creole — it is the oldest one still living, formed soon after 15th-century settlement — and the most widely spoken Portuguese-based creole, with about a million speakers.
Forms near the islands from a tropical wave off West Africa
A Cape Verde-type hurricane forms near the islands from a tropical wave off West Africa, then has the whole Atlantic to strengthen; Hugo, Floyd and Irma were examples.
Q 24Which 2015 hurricane formed unusually far east and struck Cape Verde directly?
Fred
Fred hit the islands on 31 August 2015 as the first hurricane to strike Cape Verde since 1892 and the first on record to form so far east in the tropics.
Q 25Cape Verde's national football team is nicknamed what?
The Blue Sharks
The Blue Sharks, Tubarões Azuis in Portuguese, first reached the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 and made the quarter-finals, repeating that in 2023.
Q 26Which nation broke Cape Verde's brief record as the smallest country by area to qualify for a World Cup?
Curaçao
Curaçao, at about 444 km², qualified on 18 November 2025, five weeks after Cape Verde's 4,033 km² had briefly made it the smallest World Cup qualifier by area.
Q 27Cape Verde won its first Olympic medal at Paris 2024 in which sport?
Boxing
Boxing delivered the breakthrough: Daniel Varela de Pina took men's flyweight bronze at Paris 2024, Cape Verde's first medal since its Olympic debut at Atlanta 1996.
Q 28Which fast accordion-driven dance music of the largest island, suppressed under Portuguese rule, boomed after independence?
Funaná
Funaná pairs the gaita (diatonic accordion) with the ferrinho, an iron bar scraped like a zydeco washboard; bands such as Bulimundo electrified it in the 1980s.
Q 29Batuque, the oldest Cape Verdean music genre, is performed mostly by whom?
Women, in a circle, slapping a cloth
Women, in a circle, slapping a cloth rolled between their thighs (the txabeta) drive batuque's polyrhythm, while a soloist sings and a dancer works her hips.
Q 30The salt pans of Pedra de Lume on Sal sit inside what geological feature?
A volcanic crater
Pedra de Lume's salt pans fill the floor of a volcanic crater, long extinct, where seawater seeps in and evaporates; salt was first extracted there in 1796.