The Millennium Challenge Corporation has just signed a five-year agreement with Cape Verde which is worth $66.2 million. The money will be used to help reform the nation's sanitation, water and land management sectors, and will also be used to aid economic growth.
Some $41.1 million of the money will be used to help Cape Verde’s national regulatory institutions to become more financially sound and transparent. In addition money will be used to help utilities become commercial organisations and will improve the reach of sanitation and water services to households and businesses.
One of the problems faced by Cape Verde is the scarcity of water, and this latest project is expected to benefit around 278,000 people.
Another $17.3 million of the agreement is to be used to help improve the investment climate in the country for small investors. This will be achieved through strengthening the protection of land rights, decreasing land registration time and costs and refining the legal and institutional environment to make the process more transparent.
This isn't the first Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement, as the first $100 million agreement was signed in 2005 and completed in October 2010, and was extremely successful. The aim of that agreement was to help transform the economy into one led by private sector growth, and it focused on improving infrastructure so citizens had better access to jobs, social services and ports and airports.
The agreement also saw substantial improvements in Cape Verde’s agricultural sector, as well as reforms in its financial sector. There is no reason to think this latest agreement will not be just as successful.
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