To graduate or not to graduate: The case of Cape Verde. INCLUDE special report

This INCLUDE Special Report is based on the Development Research Seminar (DRS) ‘To graduate or not to graduate’ held on 19 June 2015. This pre-graduation seminar was co-organized by INCLUDE and the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University for the defence of the PhD thesis ‘Slicing up the developing world: Differentiation in the special treatment of developing countries’ by Djalita Fialho (see Chapter 5 of this report for a summary). This thesis deals with, among other things, the graduation of Cape Verde from least developed country (LDC) status. Graduation from LDC status is an issue that is extremely relevant for new development policies, donors, recipients and potentially graduating countries. The Istanbul Declaration and Programme of Action (IPoA) for Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011–2020 commits UN member states to collectively assist LDCs to ensure that at least half of them meet the graduation criteria by 2020. So far, four LDCs have graduated: Botswana , Cape Verde, the Maldives and Samoa with Equatorial Guinea, Tuvalu and Vanuatu scheduled to graduate in June 2017 and December 2017, respectively (UNCTAD 2014). Despite this progress, halving the number of LDC countries is clearly an immense task and doubts have been voiced as to the attainability of this goal (Kawamura 2014)