São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off the coast of West Africa, is home to the remnants of Portuguese colonial plantations. The islands were settled by the Portuguese in the late 15th century and remained under their control until independence in 1975. Enslaved Africans were brought to the islands to produce sugar, coffee, and cacao on plantations known locally as roças.
Today, local communities are reclaiming their dark history and forging a different future. A guide, Quinzinho de Costa, has been working with visitors for five years, showcasing the islands’ history and culture. He notes that the roças are not just remnants of the plantation economy but also people’s homes, where they live amidst the legacy of a system that offered them little.
Reclaiming the Past
On the island of São Tomé, Quinzinho takes visitors to the Governadores monument, which commemorates locals killed by Portuguese forces during the 1953 massacre. The monument is a stark reminder of the islands’ troubled past. Nearby, the ruined pier is a reminder of the brutality of the colonial era, where some victims were chained together and thrown into the sea.
Quinzinho becomes visibly upset recounting the events, but says, “At least now we are free.” He hopes that visitors will learn about the past and pass that knowledge to younger generations. The site where the Portuguese first landed in 1470 is marked by a stone cross, but Quinzinho believes it needs better facilities and information to encourage visitors to linger.
In contrast, the island of Príncipe has seen significant investment in restoring former plantation estates. HBD Príncipe, a hotel and conservation group, has acquired several roças, including Roça Sundy, where over 100 families lived on the plantation. Instead of evicting them, HBD built a new village, The Promised Land, with stone houses, electricity, and indoor bathrooms.
Restoration and Conservation
HBD Príncipe’s sustainability manager, Emma Tuzinkiewicz, explains that every guest pays €25 towards conservation and community projects. Half the money goes to conservation, including work to protect nesting sea turtles, while the other half funds education, local livelihoods, and waste management. The group has also recycled over 52 metric tons of glass since 2023, with women’s cooperatives turning some of it into products.
At Roça Porto Real, a former palm oil estate, the central square is now a community football pitch with wooden goalposts. In an old outbuilding, the Cooperativa de Valorização de Resíduos melts discarded glass bottles in three wood-fired ovens to make jewelry beads.
Eduardo da Silva, a guide who works for HBD Príncipe, notes that tourism is a constant balancing act. He says, “If the roads were smooth tarmac, you’d have more hire cars coming onto the island. For local drivers, the mud works just fine.” This delicate balance between development and preservation is a challenge that the islands’ communities and conservation groups are working to address.
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On São Tomé, Quinzinho visits the Ruínas do Hospital Agostinho Neto, once part of a wealthy roça, where families still live among the crumbling buildings. Quinzinho calms the situation, but it highlights the need for restoration and conservation efforts to benefit local communities.
At Belo Monte, a restored cacao plantation dating from 1922, which is now a hotel, the old cacao drying room is being converted into an exhibition space. The hotel’s guest rooms and suites occupy the restored buildings, retaining colonial features such as high ceilings, tiled floors, courtyards, and terraces. The site’s history is presented through its recent UNESCO inscription, ‘Colonial Agricultural System and Forced Migration.’
As Quinzinho and the author drive along the muddy, loose-stone track in his black Toyota 4×4, they discuss the potential for tourism to support conservation and community development on the islands. The author visits the Diogo Vaz boutique, where the café sells ‘tree-to-bar’ artisan chocolate and miniature cakes, made from beans produced at the certified organic farm, Roça Diogo Vaz.
The beans are processed at Roça Francisco Cabral, a historic estate where local growers bring their harvest from other parts of the island. The heavy, brewery-like scent of fermentation hits as the author arrives, and Maria Rodrigues, a guide, explains the process of weighing, fermenting, and drying the beans before they are packed into 154-pound bags for chocolatiers in France and Switzerland.
A local team tends the historic cacao trees at Roça Diogo Vaz between harvests and turns the beans into chocolate. The estate was founded in 1880 and renovated in 2014 to become a certified organic farm.
Visitors can taste the ‘tree-to-bar’ artisan chocolate and learn about the process of making it.
Women hand-pick the beans, and the approved harvest is then prepared for export.