The museums under the Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries of Cape Verde received almost 11 thousand visitors in the first six months of the year, a number that is already much higher than the record for the whole year 2021. According to data released today by the Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPC), of this total visitors from January to June, 56% were tourists and the former Concentration Camp of Tarrafal, Santiago Island, now the Museum of Resistance, was the most visited, with 35% of the total.
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In all of 2021, Cape Verdean museums had received 8,466 visitors, the IPC recalls.
“This increase reflects the resumption of activities in the post-pandemic and the consequent investments made to enhance the national museological framework. These have been accompanied by dissemination programs that range from direct contact with the educational and tourism sector, as in the strengthening of digital communication mechanisms,” explains the IPC.
All museums managed by the IPC, a body under the Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries, also integrate the Internet portal www.museus.cv, translated into three languages and have individual pages on social networks for sharing content.
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“These are data that attest to the value that cultural assets add to destinations, even if the anchor product is associated with nature,” stresses the IPC.
About 25% of the Gross Domestic Product and employment in Cape Verde depend on tourism, a sector that came to a standstill in March 2020, with the covid-19 pandemic, after a record 819,000 tourists the previous year, but since the fourth quarter of 2021 the country has seen a gradual recovery of the sector.
Cape Verdean museums had already seen an increase of over 130% in visitors in 2021, compared to the drop the previous year (3,639 in 2020) because of covid-19, but still far from the nearly 30,000 in 2019.
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The Casa da Morna Sodade, the Ethnographic Museum of Praia, the Tabanca Museum, the Museum of the Sea, the Norberto Tavares Museum, the Núcleo Museológico Cesária, the Casa Museu Eugénio Tavares, the Museum of Salt and the Museum of Archaeology are part of this network of museums.
