Cape Verde economic performance was bolstered by one of the fastest growing tourism industries in the world, as well as by substantial capital inflows that allowed Cape Verde to build up national currency reserves to the current 3.5 months of imports. Unemployment has been falling rapidly, and the country is on track to achieve most of the UN Millennium Development Goals – including halving its 1990 poverty level. In 2007, Cape Verde joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in 2008 the country graduated from Least Developed Country (LDC) to Middle Income Country (MIC) status. Cape Verde has significant cooperation with Portugal
Literature of Cape Verde Notebook) in 1955 which won the Camilo Pessanha Award, the first Cape Verdean book to be awarded. Aguinaldo Fonseca was the forgotten poet, though his poems were published in "Linha do Horizonte" collection in 1951. At the time, writers like Manuel Lopes would be linked to resistance movements. Some writers were exiled to some European countries in the years before independence. Cape Verde became independent on July 5, 1975. Cape Verdean literature began to flourish further, the work "The Island of Contenda" was published in 1976. Writers like Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, Gabriel Mariano and others continued to write and