Cabo Verde has long stood out among African states for its political stability, but recent developments raise a different question for investors: how predictable is the state as a contractual counterparty? Cabo Verde, an archipelago of about half a million people off the coast of Senegal, has changed government peacefully since multiparty rule began in 1991. It has done so again this year. In parliamentary elections on May 17th the African Party for the Independence of Cabo Verde (PAICV) defeated the Movement for Democracy (MpD), which had governed for a decade. Francisco Carvalho, the PAICV’s leader and until then mayor of Praia, the capital, was sworn in as prime minister on June 19th. The final count gave his party