How local communities of São Tomé and Príncipe are finding a new future on former Portuguese colonial plantations

The descent into São Tomé begins in a magnesium-white glare. Green mountains rise from the Gulf of Guinea. The heat hits as soon as I leave the aircraft. The baggage hall looks like the upper half of a white polytunnel: a concrete floor, no toilets and a single carousel opening directly to the humid West African night.

São Tomé and Príncipe lies in the Gulf of Guinea, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) off Gabon’s coast. The Portuguese began settling the islands in the late 15th century and held them until independence in 1975. Enslaved Africans first produced sugar as the major plantation crop. Coffee and cacao came later, grown on plantations (known locally as roças) that spread across the islands. Plantation owners also brought in workers from elsewhere in Africa, many under contracts that bound them to years of labor.

I have come to explore the roças. This summer, UNESCO added six sites to its World Heritage list. I plan to visit four, some now hotels, others collapsing into the jungle.

On my first morning, my guide, Quinzinho de Costa, and I drive south along São Tomé’s eastern coast. He has worked as a guide for five years. Good tarmac gives way to potholes and thick mud. At Roça Água-Izé, the crumbling walls of a former hospital rise through the vegetation. Ten families live among the ruins in cramped conditions, without electricity or running water. Tourists photograph the peeling colonial architecture, but for these families, the buildings are home.

From Água-Izé, Quinzinho and I drive inland to Mont Café in São Tomé’s central mountains. Our guide, Gabriela, tells me that workers under Portuguese rule had to report at 5 am. Women spent their days checking coffee beans by hand, sorting through 66 pounds (30 kilograms) a day to remove the defective ones. Today, a women-run cooperative produces coffee at Mont Café and operates a small museum with exhibits such as old wood-powered dryers used to roast the beans.

“Tourism is a constant balancing act. If the roads were smooth tarmac, you’d have more hire cars coming onto the island. For local drivers, the mud works just fine.”

- Eduardo da Silva, guide, São Tomé

From the central mountains, we head north to the fishing community of Micoló, where Quinzinho takes me to the Governadores monument. Six white stones commemorate locals killed by Portuguese forces during the 1953 massacre. He points to the ruined pier, explaining that some victims were chained together and thrown into the sea. Quinzinho was not born when the killings took place, but becomes visibly upset recounting what happened. “At least now we are free,” he says.

On the west coast near Monteforte, a stone cross marks where the Portuguese first landed in 1470. Quinzinho wants the government to protect the site with proper parking, better facilities and information about the islands’ colonial history. He hopes visitors will learn about the past and pass that knowledge to younger generations. Stone benches sit beneath almond trees, but little else encourages visitors to linger. Quinzinho calls me over. It is September, and a humpback whale surface gently offshore.

The story is different in Príncipe, a 25-minute flight away. HBD Príncipe has a hotel on São Tomé, but it focuses on the smaller island, where it has invested in restoring former plantation estates. Near Santo António, Roça Porto Real was once a palm oil estate. Its central square is now a community football pitch with wooden goalposts. In an old outbuilding, the Cooperativa de Valorização de Resíduos (CVR) melts discarded glass bottles in three wood-fired ovens to make jewelry beads.

When hotel and conservation group HBD Príncipe acquired Roça Sundy in northwest Príncipe in 2011, more than 100 families lived on the plantation. Rather than evict them, HBD built a new village, The Promised Land. Its stone houses have electricity, indoor bathrooms and plots for growing food; a school and bakery are nearby.

The estate remains a working cacao plantation while HBD renovates the original buildings into a hotel. HBD is a major employer on Príncipe. It also provides free daily transport for islanders traveling to its properties and free English-language courses.

My guide, Eduardo da Silva, comes from São Tomé and has worked for HBD for three years. We bounce along a muddy, loose-stone track in his black Toyota 4×4. I ask how Príncipe can encourage tourism without tipping into overtourism. “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.”

I stay at Belo Monte, a restored cacao plantation dating from 1922 which is now a hotel. From the hilltop, I look out over the rainforest towards the Gulf of Guinea.

Emma Tuzinkiewicz, HBD Príncipe’s sustainability manager, tells me that every guest pays €25 towards conservation and community projects. Half the money goes to conservation, including work to protect nesting sea turtles. The other half funds education, local livelihoods and waste management. Glass recycling is another part of the work. Since 2023, HBD has recycled more than 52 metric tons, with women’s cooperatives turning some of it into products.

It is an uncomfortable encounter and a reminder that these ruins are not just remnants of the plantation economy; they are also people’s homes, a place where people live amid the legacy of a system that offered them little.

When I ask Tuzinkiewicz how the roça’s history is presented, she points to its recent UNESCO inscription, ‘Colonial Agricultural System and Forced Migration.’

“Other roças such as the more famous Água-Izé are shell ruins, forgotten about and neglected,” she says. “Belo Monte is restored, with more to come.” Guest rooms and suites occupy the restored buildings, where high ceilings, tiled floors, courtyards and terraces retain colonial features. The old cacao drying room is being converted into an exhibition space.

Back on São Tomé, I visit Roça Francisco Cabral, a historic estate where local growers process cacao. The heavy, brewery-like scent of fermentation hits as I arrive. Maria Rodrigues, a guide who has been here for a year, explains the process.

Growers bring their harvest from other parts of the island. They weigh each delivery before the beans ferment for two days in wooden crates. They dry for a week in open-air greenhouses, where workers rake them three times daily, before moving to a wood-fired drying room. Women hand-pick the beans, and the approved harvest is packed into 154-pound (70-kilogram) bags for chocolatiers in France and Switzerland.

At Belo Monte, I’d eaten raw cacao beans at breakfast, as a snack or sprinkled over cereal. They look like peanuts and taste intensely bitter. After visiting the plantations and tasting the finished chocolate on Príncipe, I’m seeing what happens in between at Francisco Cabral.

Near the cacao plantation, we visit the Ruínas do Hospital Agostinho Neto, once part of a wealthy roça. Families still live among the crumbling buildings, with rubbish scattered around them. As we approach, a man steps in front of Quinzinho’s car and asks for payment to visit. Quinzinho calms the situation. It is an uncomfortable encounter and a reminder that these ruins are not just remnants of the plantation economy; they are also people’s homes, a place where people live amid the legacy of a system that offered them little.

Back in the capital, I stop at the Diogo Vaz boutique, where the café sells ‘tree-to-bar’ artisan chocolate and miniature cakes. The chocolate comes from Roça Diogo Vaz. Founded in 1880, the estate was renovated in 2014 and became a certified organic farm. A local team tends its historic cacao trees between harvests and turns the beans into chocolate.

With a few hours before my evening flight, I walk along a beach near the runway and ask Quinzinho what he wants to happen to São Tomé’s neglected roças. He wants them restored, but not simply turned into hotels or tourist attractions. He says local people should be able to visit to understand, honor, and remember the past, and pass that history on to younger generations.

On Príncipe, HBD has restored some roças. On São Tomé, families still live in the ruins. Whether more of these estates will be restored, and whether local people will share in that future, remains an open question.

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