Press Release – September 3, 2020
The United States Provides Over $1.5 million to Help Cabo Verde Respond to COVID-19
The U.S. government is prioritizing foreign assistance to maximize the impact of the United States’ global response to COVID-19 and meet urgent needs. As part of this effort, on August 21, the Department of State announced that the U.S. government would invest $1.5 million in Cabo Verde to support the country’s efforts to mitigate the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These funds will be granted to companies in Cabo Verde that are working in labor-intensive, women- and youth-dominated sectors. The funds will be invested with a view to safeguarding jobs and enabling these companies to adjust to the rapidly changing economic environment caused by the pandemic. This funding is part of a total U.S. investment of $5.8 million in Economic Support Funds (ESF) assistance for Cabo Verde, Zimbabwe, and Djibouti to finance near-term mitigation efforts and address the second-order impacts of the pandemic in the long term, across a variety of sectors.
The U.S. Embassy in Praia and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will oversee the management and allocation of the $1.5 million in assistance to Cabo Verde through the West Africa Trade and Investment Hub, an initiative designed to generate new private investment, create jobs, and increase the value of exports with a particular emphasis on empowering women and youth. On August 13, the Embassy and Trade Hub partnered with Cabo Verde TradeInvest to host a virtual training for the Cabo Verdean private sector to learn more about the benefits of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), other requirements to export duty-free to the United States, and the Trade Hub’s Co-Investment fund.
This COVID-19 economic assistance is in addition to healthcare supplies that the U.S. Embassy in Praia provided in June to the Ministry of Health with funds from the U.S. Africa Command’s Office of Humanitarian Assistance to support disadvantaged populations and supply local health centers in the ongoing fight to combat COVID-19. This assistance builds upon historic U.S. foreign assistance provided to Cabo Verde totaling more than $284 million over the past 20 years, including more than $61 million in health assistance.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the U.S. government has announced more than $1.6 billion in State Department and USAID emergency health, humanitarian, economic, and development assistance to over 120 countries to help them fight the disease and its impacts. Our global efforts build upon decades of U.S. investment in life-saving health and humanitarian assistance, and we continue to ensure that the substantial U.S. funding and scientific efforts remain a central and coordinated part of the worldwide effort against this deadly virus.
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