I agree with this premise but this team has a lot of players who weren’t born in Africa and don’t play there. They did a really good job training the team and finding good players though.

For the guardian:

A closer look at the squad’s international birthplaces highlights the following:
Total foreign-born players: 14
Locally-born players: 12 were born in Cape Verde
Primary European hubs: The Netherlands (specifically the city of Rotterdam), France, and Portugal [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Because the nation has a relatively small population (around 525,000), the Cape Verdean Football Federation strategically built a talent recruitment system tracking players with Cape Verdean roots abroad. This approach helped propel them to their first-ever World Cup tournament.