N-Ways

Home codes

Every building in Cabo Verde has a home code

175,629 home codes, one for every building on every island, the Platô and central Mindelo included. Where the Câmara has numbered the street, its address comes first with the code beside it. How the codes work and how to build on them.

By N-Ways ·

Also in Français Português

Palmarejo 12 34Palmarejo GrandePraia · Santiago
Palmarejo Grande Official name, in small print7600 Correios postcode, for context

Every building in Cabo Verde has a home code: 175,629 of them, from Santo Antão to Brava, including the historic centres of Praia and Mindelo and every house on a street the Câmara has already numbered. One kind of code now works for every home in the country.

What a home code is

A home code is the short name of your bairro, zona or povoação and a short number. Palmarejo 12 34 is said “Palmarejo, doze, trinta e quatro”, two pairs, the way phone numbers are said. Smaller places get three digits: João Vaz 214. The name in the code is never longer than 12 characters and two words; the full name, such as Lote Achada São Filipe, is printed small beside it.

The code leads to your gate or front door, not to the middle of a roof. It belongs to the whole plot, the lote, so a house with a kitchen and a water tank in the yard has one code.

Where the street is already numbered

Some streets have a name and a door number from the Câmara Municipal, like Rua Barragem de Figueira Gorda in western Praia. Those addresses come first, exactly as the municipality writes them, and the home code sits beside them:

  • Rua Barragem de Figueira Gorda 142, Praia is also Cidadela 10 88.
  • The Correios headquarters in the Platô is Platô 11 32.

Both lead to the same door. A courier can be given either one.

One code, one place, in the whole country

Many names repeat. There is a Fazenda in Praia and another in Tarrafal, so every place with the same name shares one national range of numbers: Fazenda 24 34 is in Praia and Fazenda 34 50 is in Tarrafal, and neither needs the town after it. A check digit in the long form catches a mistyped number.

Find yours

  1. Open N-Ways at home and tap Get my code. The app finds the building you are standing in and shows its code.
  2. Not at home? Find your building on the map and tap it, or drop a pin on it.
  3. Share it in one tap, on WhatsApp or by text.

Every code starts provisional and becomes confirmed when the people who live there agree in the app that it is right. A house too new to be on the map gets its code on the spot. Codes never change and are never given to another home.

Get my code

What a home code is not

  • Not a land title. It is an address, nothing more.
  • Not about people. A code describes a place. No names of residents are stored with it.
  • Not a replacement. The Câmara’s street address and the Correios postcode stay, shown beside the code.

Open for developers

The model, the engine and the full registry of 175,629 codes are open on GitHub, with each official street address beside its code. Couriers, banks, shops and public services can decode home codes in their own systems, offline if they need to. The white paper explains every rule, in Portuguese, English and French.

Your gate deserves an address.

Open N-Ways at home, tap Get my code, and share it in one tap.

Get my code Open on GitHub