José Maria Neves

He was Prime Minister from 2001 to 2016 and has been President since 2021. He is a candidate for re-election as President of Cape Verde in the 15 November 2026 election, admitted by the Constitutional Court on 21 September 2026.

Career

Neves studied at Brazil's Getúlio Vargas Foundation. He was Prime Minister from 2001 to 2016, the fourth person to hold the post, and also held the finance portfolio in 2003 and 2004. His PAICV won the parliamentary elections of 2006 with 52.28% and 2011 with 52.68%. In the 2021 presidential election he won with 51.7% of the vote against Carlos Veiga's 42.4%, and became the fifth President. He has written nine books on public administration and governance.

Positions

Wikipedia records that as Prime Minister he established diplomatic relations with China, signed treaties with the European Union and formed in 2008 the country's first government with a female majority, eight of fifteen portfolios. In 2022 and 2023 he received honours from Senegal, Portugal and Luxembourg. His party, the PAICV, is described by Wikipedia as centre-left to left-wing, democratic socialist and trending towards social democracy since the 2010s.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · Forbes África Lusófona · Wikipedia

Photo: Ricardo Stuckert of Palácio do Planalto (Palace of Planalto, workplace of…, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)