Sátiro Sanches
Sátiro Gil Tavares Sanches (born 16 November 1972) is a Cape Verdean economist, financial consultant and public administrator. His career has focused on public finance, business management and the monitoring of state-owned enterprises, with positions in public institutions in Cape Verde and Portugal. In August 2026, he became coordinator of the State-Owned Enterprise Monitoring Unit (Unidade de Acompanhamento do Setor Empresarial do Estado, UASE) at Cape Verde's Ministry of Finance.
He has held positions in the municipal administration of Santa Cruz, Cape Verde's Directorate-General of the Treasury and the office of the Minister of Finance. In Portugal, he worked as a consultant at the Technical Unit for the Oversight and Monitoring of the State-Owned Enterprise Sector (Unidade Técnica de Acompanhamento e Monitorização do Setor Público Empresarial, UTAM).
Education
Sanches pursued higher education in Portugal and the United States. From 1994 to 2000, he studied at Fernando Pessoa University in Porto, where he obtained a degree in economics and finance. Between 2003 and 2005, he attended a master's programme in economics, specialising in economic development, at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto.
He subsequently attended Cambridge College in Massachusetts, where he earned a Master of Business Administration between 2005 and 2007. He also studied information technology at the Millennium Training Institute in Boston from 2008 to 2009.
In 2015, he undertook postgraduate studies in port management at Fernave in Lisbon. Between 2018 and 2019, he attended a postgraduate programme in business law at the Institute of Labour Law of the University of Lisbon's Faculty of Law.
Santa Cruz municipal administration
Sanches began his career in Cape Verdean public administration in the municipality of Santa Cruz, on the island of Santiago. From 2001 to 2002, he headed the municipal council's Studies and Planning Office, working on municipal planning.
Between 2002 and 2003, he served as director of community development for the same municipality, based in Pedra Badejo.
Public administration and state finance
In 2010, Sanches joined Cape Verde's Ministry of Employment and Human Resources Development as a senior technical officer working on employment and vocational training. He remained in that position until 2012. That year, he moved to the State Shareholdings Directorate within the Directorate-General of the Treasury at the Ministry of Finance, where he worked on monitoring companies in which the state held an ownership interest.
In 2013, he became a member of the liquidation committee of the Fisheries Development Fund (FDP, S.A.), established following the entity's dissolution. He remained on the committee after its membership was reorganised in 2014. In late 2014, he became head of the State Shareholdings Service at the Directorate-General of the Treasury, a position he held until 2017. From March 2016 to February 2017, he also headed the office of Cape Verde's Minister of Finance.
Between 2017 and 2018, he worked as a senior technical officer at UASE. In 2017, he served as an alternate member of the panel evaluating consultancy proposals concerning the assets and business operations of Feira Internacional de Cabo Verde (FIC, S.A.).
Teaching
Alongside his work in public administration, Sanches taught at the University of Cape Verde from 2010 to 2012. During the 2010–2011 academic year, he taught State and Public Policy on undergraduate programmes in political science, education, public relations and executive secretarial studies. Between 2011 and 2012, he taught Social Responsibility and Governance, as well as Business and State Protocol, the latter at the university's School of Business and Governance. During the same period, he also worked as an entrepreneurship trainer with the Peace Corps.
International development cooperation
Between 2018 and 2019, Sanches worked as a senior financial consultant for Luxembourg's development cooperation programme through LuxDev, as part of Programme CVE/081 in Cape Verde. His consultancy involved technical assistance and support for the finance department of the Centre for Renewable Energy and Industrial Maintenance (CERMI), a Cape Verdean state-owned enterprise.
Work in Portugal
In December 2018, Sanches began a professional internship at UTAM in Lisbon, which continued until March 2019. In September 2019, he was appointed as a second-level consultant at UTAM for a fixed term. The unit operates within Portugal's finance administration and oversees and monitors the state-owned enterprise sector. His appointment was renewed in September 2022 for a further three years.
In June 2025, he was still listed among UTAM's staff in a notice published in the Diário da República.
UASE coordinator
In August 2026, Sanches returned to Cape Verdean public administration as coordinator of UASE, the Ministry of Finance unit responsible for monitoring state-owned enterprises and state shareholdings. He succeeded Luís Barbosa, returning to the unit where he had previously worked between 2017 and 2018. His management contract established a three-year term effective from 1 August 2026.