Cape Verde Trivia
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58 free Cape Verde trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 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 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of Cape Verde's ten islands has no permanent residents?
Santa Luzia
Santa Luzia once had a few farmers and herders, but the last people left decades ago; today the whole island is a nature reserve where sea turtles nest.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Cape Verde?
Praia
Praia, Portuguese for 'beach', took over as capital in 1770 because its plateau was easier to defend against pirates than the battered first capital, Ribeira Grande.
Q 03Cape Verde is named after a peninsula on the coast of which African country?
Senegal
Senegal's Cap-Vert, the 'green cape' at Dakar and mainland Africa's westernmost tip, lent its name to islands far offshore that are anything but green: most of their land is arid.
Q 04Which 1494 treaty split the newly found world along a line drawn 370 leagues west of Cape Verde?
Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas moved the pope's dividing line from 100 leagues west of the islands to 370, after Portugal's King John II objected that the first line left his kingdom too little.
Q 05Cape Verde won independence in 1975 after which revolution toppled the dictatorship in Lisbon?
Carnation
The Carnation Revolution of April 1974, an army coup in which almost no shots were fired, ended Portugal's colonial wars, and Cape Verde was independent little more than a year later.
Q 06Which revolutionary, assassinated in 1973, founded the PAIGC that led Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau to independence?
Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Cabral was shot outside his home in Conakry by a disgruntled veteran of his own party, about eight months before Guinea-Bissau declared the independence he had fought for.
Q 07Cesária Évora, Cape Verde's most famous singer, was known by what nickname?
The Barefoot Diva
The Barefoot Diva performed without shoes; she began singing in local bars at sixteen but found worldwide success only with the album Miss Perfumado in 1992, when she was 50.
Q 08Which melancholy song genre, made famous by Cesária Évora, is considered Cape Verde's national music?
Morna
Morna dwells on love, departure and longing for the motherland, the themes of a people forever sailing away; UNESCO added it to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2019.
Q 09Cape Verde's flag shows a ring of yellow stars representing what?
The archipelago's islands
The archipelago's islands get one star each, ringed for unity; the 1992 flag dropped the old ruling party's colours after it lost power, and its designer wanted one nobody would mistake for Guinea-Bissau's.
Q 10Cape Verde's currency, the escudo, has been pegged to which currency since 1999?
The euro
The euro inherited the link: Cape Verde tied its escudo to Portugal's currency in 1998, and when Portugal adopted the euro the next year the fixed rate simply carried over.
Q 11Cachupa, the national dish, is a slow-cooked stew based on which two staples?
Corn and beans
Corn and beans, the corn dried as hominy, simmer slowly with fish or meat; next morning the leftovers are fried up as cachupa refogada and served for breakfast with a fried egg.
Q 12Grogue, Cape Verde's traditional spirit, is distilled from what?
Sugarcane juice
Sugarcane juice, crushed out in a press called a trapiche, is fermented and distilled into grogue; mixed with lime and molasses it becomes the cocktail ponche.
Q 13Pico do Fogo, Cape Verde's highest point at 2,829 m, is what?
An active volcano
Q 21Which Creole word for longing, the title of a celebrated Cesária Évora song, voices the emigrant's ache for home?
Sodade
Sodade fits a nation with more of its people abroad than at home: the song mourns islanders who left as contract labourers for São Tomé, and Évora's 1992 recording carried it worldwide.
Q 22The first Cape Verdean immigrants to Massachusetts in the 19th century came to work in which industry?
Whaling
Whaling ships out of New Bedford called at the islands to hire crewmen, many of whom settled in Massachusetts and later turned to picking cranberries.
Q 23What makes an Atlantic storm a 'Cape Verde hurricane'?
It forms near the islands
Pico do Fogo is an active volcano: its 2014–15 eruption sent lava through Portela and Bangaeira, the two villages on the caldera floor, and destroyed most of their buildings.
Q 14Which is the largest and most populous of the Cape Verde islands, home to the capital?
Santiago
Santiago was the first island settled, in 1462, and holds about half the country's people, yet its original town, Ribeira Grande, was wrecked by raiders and abandoned as the capital.
Q 15Cape Verde's islands are split into which two named groups?
Barlavento (windward) and Sotavento (leeward)
Barlavento (windward) and Sotavento (leeward) sort the islands by the trade winds: the northern group sits full in them, while the southern group lies downwind.
Q 16UNESCO lists Cidade Velha as what?
The first European colonial settlement in the tropics
UNESCO listed Cidade Velha in 2009 as the first European colonial settlement in the tropics; founded in 1462 as Ribeira Grande, it grew rich on the slave trade until raiders ruined it.
Q 17Which English privateer sacked Ribeira Grande, Cape Verde's old capital, in 1585?
Francis Drake
Francis Drake landed about a thousand men in November 1585 and plundered Ribeira Grande; a French raid under Jacques Cassard in 1712 finished the old capital off.
Q 18Cape Verde was the first landfall in January 1832 for which scientific ship?
HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin
HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, landed here first because Tenerife demanded quarantine over cholera in England; a band of seashells high in the cliffs set him puzzling over geology.
Q 19Which port city on São Vicente, birthplace of Cesária Évora, is famous for its carnival?
Mindelo
Mindelo grew up in the 19th century as a coaling station where British steamships refuelled in mid-Atlantic; its carnival mixes Portuguese roots with later Brazilian influence.
Q 20What distinction is Cape Verdean Creole often said to hold among creoles?
It is the oldest one still living
It is the oldest one still living, or so it is often called; it is the first language of nearly everyone on the islands, yet Portuguese alone is official.
It forms near the islands, from a wave of storms rolling off West Africa, and then has the whole warm Atlantic to grow in; Irma, a Category 5 monster in 2017, began this way.
Q 24Which dusty winter wind off the Sahara veils Cape Verde in haze?
Harmattan
The harmattan picks up Saharan dust and carries it hundreds of kilometres out to sea, clouding the islands' skies from about November to March; at its thickest the haze can keep aircraft on the ground.
Q 25Cape Verde's national football team is nicknamed what?
The Blue Sharks
The Blue Sharks draw on the diaspora: Dublin-born defender Roberto Lopes was recruited through a LinkedIn message from the coach, and in 2025 the team qualified for its first World Cup.
Q 26Which nation broke Cape Verde's brief record as the smallest country by area to qualify for a World Cup?
Curaçao
Curaçao, an island of about 150,000 people, did it by calling on its diaspora: most of the squad that qualified under the Dutch coach Dick Advocaat was born in the Netherlands.
Q 27Cape Verde won its first Olympic medal at Paris 2024 in which sport?
Boxing
Boxing brought the breakthrough: flyweight Daniel Varela de Pina was sure of bronze once he won his quarter-final, because Olympic boxing gives both losing semi-finalists a medal.
Q 28Which fast, accordion-driven dance music of Cape Verde's largest island boomed after independence?
Funaná
Funaná was once banned from the capital as indecent peasant music; after independence the band Bulimundo plugged its accordion rhythms into electric instruments and made it a national craze.
Q 29Batuque, thought to be Cape Verde's oldest music genre, is performed mostly by whom?
Women, in a circle, slapping a cloth
Women, in a circle, slapping a cloth, beat out batuque's rhythm; the colonial authorities and the Church suppressed it as too African, and by the 1950s it had nearly died out.
Q 30The salt pans of Pedra de Lume on Sal sit inside what geological feature?
A volcanic crater
Pedra de Lume's salt pans cover the floor of a volcanic crater, long extinct; workers began harvesting there in the 1790s and soon cut a tunnel through the crater wall to carry the salt out.