On 12 July 2025 the small twin-island state of São Tomé and Príncipe—comprising just 210,000 inhabitants as of 2024—celebrates its 50^th independence anniversary since Portuguese rule. The hitherto uninhabited islands in the Gulf of Guinea were colonized by the Portuguese starting from 1493 by white settlers and enslaved Africans from the Kingdom of Benin, followed subsequently by enslaved people from the Kingdom of Kongo and Angola. The resulting genetic and cultural mixing among the different groups brought forth the archipelago’s distinct African Creole society with its own culture and language.

In his speech on Independence Day in 1975, the country’s first president, Manuel Pinto da Costa (1975–1990), declared that the São Toméans had achieved this historic and decisive stage because five centuries of colonial domination and oppression had not succeeded in breaking either their will nor determination to live freely and independently. The liberation struggle, he said, would be meaningless if São Toméans did not use the independence to definitively eliminate poverty, misery, unemployment, disease and ignorance, as well as an end to the evils inherited from the fascist colonial system. The independent state inherited from the Portuguese was characterized by a plantation economy based on cocoa monoculture. In fact, in the 16th century, São Tomé emerged as the first tropical plantation economy based on African slave labour and sugar monoculture. The plantation economy disappeared gradually in the 17th century when São Tomé was displaced by Brazil’s emerging plantation economy where the sugar produced was of much better quality. In São Tomé and Príncipe, the plantation economy was only re-established in the 19th century when the Portuguese introduced new cash crops from Brazil, coffee and cocoa. Initially coffee was the major cash crop but by the end of the 19th century, cocoa was by far the main export product.

50 years on, much has indisputably changed and improved in São Tomé and Príncipe. Independence and sovereignty have created new opportunities in international relations and cooperation with other nations in Africa and beyond—with São Tomé’s current bilateral partners including China, Portugal, Angola, Brazil, Nigeria, India, Japan, France, Turkey, Russia, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Morocco, Cabo Verde, Serbia and the USA. But 50 years of independence have not been sufficient for eliminating misery, poverty, unemployment or disease. Despite a rising Human Development Index from 0.45 in 1990 to 0.63 in 2019, three-quarters of the population currently live below the poverty line. For decades, the country has been heavily dependent on foreign assistance, with over 90 per cent of the country’s public investment projects financed by external partners. Due to a lack of employment opportunities and economic prospects at home, emigration has in recent years become significant and increasing, mostly to Portugal, where 52 per cent of the migrants reside. Migrants to Portugal increased from 7,837 in 2021 to 19,702 in 2023.

Besides Manuel Pinto da Costa (born in 1937), three ministers of São Tomé’s first ten-member national government of 1975 are still alive: Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence Miguel Trovoada (1936), Minister of Economic Coordination Leonel Mário d’Alva (1935), and Minister of Internal Administration Daniel Daio (1947). Compared with the current situation in their country, at the time, they clearly had other future expectations. Like the other four former Portuguese colonies in Africa, at independence, they established a socialist one-party state based on the Soviet example. The socialist regime nationalized the Portuguese-owned plantations without compensation and tried to diversify the economy. Soon after independence, the one-party regime was affected by internal strife, while the leadership of Pinto da Costa became increasingly autocratic.

When the socialist regime proved to be a political and socioeconomic failure, Pinto da Costa accepted the introduction of multiparty democracy in 1990. At the time, his three former companions had either been expelled or had abandoned the regime; and after 1990 belonged to different political parties. The democratic transition brought civil and political rights, a free-market economy, and various Western providers of foreign assistance. In the Ibrahim Index of African Governance 2023, São Tomé and Príncipe is ranked 12th, while, for comparison, Nigeria is rated 33rd out of 54 countries. However, the system change failed to bring significant socioeconomic development and a concurrent reduction of external dependence. Despite consecutive agricultural reforms, the country failed to increase cocoa output or diversify agricultural exports, while the development of tourism lagged significantly behind expectations.