Currently 20% of the child population in Cape Verde lack access to regular supplies of drinking water and 14% of all children are under nourished; 82% of all food has to be imported to meet the country's needs. There are 221,000 children under the age of 18 in Cape Verde and whilst primary school enrolment is pretty much universal only 27% of all children attend secondary school. Many miss out on school to engage in child labour; working in agriculture and often exposed to dangerous machinery or in domestic servitude or simply washing cars and street vending to supplement the meagre family income. During the 1980s many moved into the capital of Praia putting pressure on already limited resources where housing was already of poor quality resulting in some children being abandoned, however there has, of late, been a tendency for many to migrate back into rural areas where there is poor access to basic amenities such as sanitation which is available to just 39% of the rural child population.

Child sponsor programs in Cape Verde concentrate on ensuring each child in Cape Verde has access to basic necessities such as food and education, whilst other work include the expensive extraction of the islands' underground water reserves and educating the population about the dangers of deforestation and sustainable environmental issues however, unlike many other countries in Africa, there few child sponsor programs.