Cape Verde: Island paradise with a dark side | DW Documentary

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Endless beaches, majestic mountains and villages with multi-colored houses: Cape Verde has become one of the hottest new destinations for social media influencers. Here, tourists can enjoy a week at an all-inclusive resort for as little as €700, including travel.

But virtually none of this benefits the island. Indeed, a lack of opportunities, coupled with a severe drought, mean that some women have to resort to stealing sand from the sea floor in order to survive.

The islands are on the frontline of global warming. It has hardly rained in the past seven years. While tourists enjoy numerous huge swimming pools and are unaware of the crisis, families in Cape Verde are restricted to a few 25-liter containers of water per day. All food and supplies for the hotels are imported from wherever they can be sourced cheapest, providing no benefit to the local economy.

On many of the island’s beaches, the sand has completely disappeared. All that remains are shores strewn with pebbles. For years, the women of Ribeira da Barca have been stealing sand to sell to the construction industry. They collected all the sand that covered the beach long ago. Now they have to fetch it from the bottom of the sea. The sand thieves operate at low tide. These women carry no fewer than 50 kilograms of sand on their heads each trip. Most of them can’t swim so, every time they enter the sea, they are risking their lives. For this, they are paid approximately €10 a week.

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