The African country’s first Kriolu school manual was meant to signify a breakthrough. Instead, it exposed tensions over language, identity, and power, even as teachers quietly use Kriolu to make education work.

Nearly every child in Cape Verde grows up speaking their island’s Kriolu. In school, however, they are taught in Portuguese, the language inherited from colonial rule. That linguistic mismatch has shaped education in the island republic for decades, especially in rural areas, where Portuguese can feel closer to a foreign language than a mother tongue.

In early 2025, the government seemed to take a decisive step toward closing that educational and cultural gap. The Ministry of Education introduced the country’s first official Kriolu school manual: Língua e Cultura Cabo-Verdiana 10.º ano. With it, the state formally acknowledged the language most Cape Verdeans speak at home.

But only seven months later, on September 16, 2025, the manual was suspended.

Birth of the Kriolu manual

Even though its use in the classroom was short-lived, the manual was not an ad-hoc product. It grew out of a 2021 petition signed by more than 200 linguists and educators advocating for language policy reform. It was supported by ALMA-CV, an association dedicated to the recognition and promotion of Kriolu. 

Researchers at the Universidade de Cabo Verde – linguists and educators who were involved in designing and developing the curriculum – described the manual as an effort not only to teach Kriolu, but to build linguistic awareness and reflect the archipelago’s dialect diversity. For the manuel, they drew on internationally recognised pedagogical approaches.

Efforts to formalize Kriolu in education are not new. For decades, proposals have surfaced and stalled, often advancing symbolically while wobling at the point of implementation.

Language is power

Once distributed, the Kriolu manual was followed by a flood of criticism that had little to do with pedagogy. Instead, it became the focal point of a long-simmering debate: whose Kriolu was being elevated to an official standard, which islands were being represented, and who gets to define national identity through language. What was intended as a consolidating milestone quickly turned into a symbol of division and difference.

Some critics – among them the poet José Luiz Tavares, who sought legal intervention and filed a criminal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office – took issue not with Kriolu itself, but with the choice of orthography and standardisation principles. They argued that the manual’s “pandialetal” form departed from established norms and failed to reflect the natural linguistic diversity of the islands. Some accused Minister Amadeu Cruz of imposing minority varieties from the Barlavento region as the standard of the Cape Verdean language. Therefore, critics demanded suspension of the manual and destruction of printed copies.

Government (re)action

When the manual was first released, government officials framed it as experimental and iterative, as a pilot meant to spark discussion, gather feedback, and inform future language policy rather than serve as a final curriculum.

But as criticism intensified across the islands, that framing shifted. The Ministry of Education later described the suspension as a gesture of openness to technical and scientific dialogue, aimed at avoiding further tension and working toward broader consensus on language inclusion in education. Since then, no further announcements or updates on this matter have been made.

Informal use of Kriolu

The backlash over the manual played out loudly in public discourse, but obscured a quieter reality. Long before the book was announced – and even after it was pulled – teachers in rural communities have used Kriolu informally when Portuguese proves insufficient. Not as a political statement, but as a practical one: to help children understand lessons, stay engaged, and feel capable in a system that asks them to learn in a language they do not speak at home.

Across villages on islands like Santo Antão and Fogo, this practice has become routine. Teachers switch between Portuguese and local Kriolu to explain lessons or comfort younger students. These efforts exist largely outside official policy; tolerated, sometimes encouraged, but rarely formalized.

The suspension of the manual effectively pauses what had been the most concrete step yet toward the official inclusion of Kriolu in the school system, wherefore once again the push to formalize Kriolu has lost momentum. What gets lost in these debates is that the costs of inaction are not evenly distributed. Linguistic disputes play out in institutions and public discourse, but their consequences are felt in classrooms – often in rural areas – where students must adapt to a school language they do not speak at home.