Yes, travel insurance is a sensible default for a trip centered on Praia, the capital of Cape Verde on Santiago Island, and the most practical reason to carry it here is the archipelago's thin inter-island transport network rather than any particular danger in the capital itself. Missed or delayed connections between islands are a far more common source of claims than illness or injury for most visitors.
Praia's hospitals handle routine treatment reasonably well for a city of its size, but anything serious or specialist typically means transfer off the archipelago entirely, most often to Lisbon given Cape Verde's long ties to Portugal, or to the Canary Islands for a faster, more localized transfer. Confirm your policy covers international medical evacuation rather than assuming local care extends to complex or specialist cases.
Getting between islands - say, from Praia's Plateau district out to Sal or Mindelo - depends on a limited number of weekly flights and slower inter-island ferries, and a missed connection can cost you a day or more of an itinerary. Trip-delay cover that responds specifically to inter-island transport, not just international flights, is worth confirming before you book a multi-island trip through Praia.
The dry season, roughly November through June, brings hazy Saharan dust that can occasionally disrupt flight visibility, while the shorter rainy season from August to October brings the year's heaviest downpours and a real risk of localized flash flooding on Santiago Island. Either way, keep an eye on how your policy treats weather-related delay before you travel.
Keep any clinic paperwork, airline or ferry-operator delay notices, and receipts for unplanned overnight stays if an inter-island connection falls through. Check whether your existing health cover extends abroad and specifically to Cape Verde before relying on it, and confirm your policy's claims-reporting window for both medical and travel-delay claims well before departure.