The first Foire Internationale des Femmes Entrepreneures (FIFE) brought a year of training, mentoring and equipment support to Sartrouville, reconnecting the women entrepreneurs in Cape Verde with the diaspora that helped make the project possible. On 27 June 2026, the EmpowHER project closed its activities in a town on the edge of Paris with cakes stacked, product tables, panels and representatives from Cape Verdean municipalities in the hall.

Nearly a third of Cape Verdean women live below the poverty line, and half of the country’s working women hold informal jobs. For the women of Santiago, the largest island in Cape Verde, and the one with the country’s highest poverty rates, it is more severe. EmpowHER: Women’s Entrepreneurship in Cape Verde set out to change that reality for 50 of them, and to shift the horizon for 200 more who are still in school.

Coordinated by Avenir Écoles Cap-Vert (AECV), a France-based association of the Cape Verdean diaspora, and delivered in partnership with the Institute of Employment and Vocational Training (IEFP) in Cape Verde, 50 women from Santiago’s rural municipalities were trained in entrepreneurship, financial management and agrifood transformation: the skills needed to turn jams, dried fruit and juices into viable businesses. Out of them, 20 were selected based on the potential of their business ideas to further refine their plans through mentoring from Cape Verdean diaspora members. They also received tailored coaching and equipment support to materialise and formalise their entrepreneurial ventures.

Alongside them, 200 girls in three secondary schools took part in workshops and awareness sessions meant to put entrepreneurship and leadership on their radar, encouraging them to see the opportunities available to build their futures in Cape Verde.

Run the world: what the day looked like

All this work culminated in an event hall in Sartrouville on the last Saturday of June with FIFE 2026. There, AECV built an actual marketplace: three sides of the hall lined with tables of products, from skincare to jewelry to Cape Verdean merch, ponche and street food. Each product, each one of them, produced by ventures led by Cape Verdean or diaspora women.

The emcees of the programme? Women. They hosted the panel discussions and the sharing of testimonies, where female entrepreneurs described their own journeys in their own words. Representatives of the nine partner municipalities in Cape Verde, Praia, São Domingos, Santa Catarina, São Salvador do Mundo, Santa Cruz, São Lourenço dos Órgãos, Ribeira Grande de Santiago, São Miguel and Tarrafal, were also present and got to share their own experiences in supporting women’s entrepreneurship through the project.

Throughout the day, conversations moved naturally between product demonstrations, networking opportunities and discussions about entrepreneurship, diaspora engagement and local development.

Towards the evening, there was a more convivial closing stretch, extending the day’s exchanges into a festive evening. Here is a sneak peek of what it was like.

Women represent

Beyond the music, conversations in Kabuverdianu, panel discussions and celebrations, the event never lost sight of its purpose: recognising the inspiring journeys of the women of Santiago.

The 50 women who are part of this project chose one representative to travel to Sartrouville, bring the products each of them had made for their own businesses and share their experience. Her name is Claudia.

During a conversation with the EUDiF team, she reflected on how the training had transformed her own business. Today, she expanded the range of products using ingredients grown in her own garden, allowing her to create more value from what she cultivates. But perhaps the biggest change, she explained, was not individual—it was collective. The women who met through EmpowHER have become a network that continues well beyond the project. They exchange advice, recommend each other’s products, share customers and stand side by side at local markets, helping each other. What began as a training programme has grown into a community of entrepreneurs building their businesses together rather than alone.

Following the event, our team also had the pleasure of a follow-up conversation with AECV’s president, Mrs. Adriana Mendes Correia. Curious to hear her reflections? Watch it here:

Closing the loop

The women trained in Santiago rarely get to see how their story lands with the diasporas in France, who helped make the project possible in the first place. The diasporas, in turn, rarely gets more than a report or a photo from the projects they support. Through this culminating event, EmpowHER gave both sides of that relationship something concrete to hold onto: a jar of homemade jam became more than a product as it became proof of what sustained investment, diaspora engagement, partnership and entrepreneurship can achieve together.