São Tomé and Príncipe

Overview

São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe is an island country of about 240,000 people in the Gulf of Guinea, some 250 kilometres off the west coast of Central Africa. Its land area of roughly 960 square km2 is spread across two main islands and a scatter of smaller islets, making it the second-smallest country in Africa. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are its nearest neighbours. Distance from the mainland shapes its external relations: trade, transport, and public finances all depend on maritime and air links and on partners abroad, with Portugal remaining the closest of these outside the region. The islands were uninhabited when Portuguese navigators reached them in the late fifteenth century and were settled as a plantation colony. Independence followed in 1975, and a new constitution in 1990 replaced single-party rule with multiparty democracy. The country is also notable for its ecological richness, with forests covering more than half of its land area and levels of plant and bird endemism that are high for its size. Portuguese is the official language, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion, alongside Protestant and other faiths. 

São Tomé and Príncipe remains a small island economy in which a narrow export base and heavy reliance on imports shape both household incomes and the external balance. Cocoa, grown on the estates laid out in the plantation era, still accounts for the largest share of merchandise exports, while fishing and a slowly growing tourism sector draw on the islands’ coastal and forest assets. In 2025, São Tomé and Príncipe’s GDP per capita was approximately US$4,084, and real GDP grew by 1.0%.

Source: World Bank. (2026). World Development Indicators, from https://data.worldbank.org/country/sao-tome-and-principe