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People
Demography and Culture
Of São Tomé and Principe's total population (about 164,000), most inhabitants live on São Tomé and 7,000 live on Principe.
The first inhabitants of the islands were the Portuguese who came around 1470. The Portuguese quickly began bringing slaves to São Tomé and Principe from different regions of the African mainland, thus setting the stage for divisions throughout the colonial period. These divisisions, however, were complimented and re-arranged by secondary divisions within the caste-like São Toméan plantation economy. The slaves were used for two purposes. First, the Portuguese used the slaves to develop plantation agriculture. Second, slaves became a primary export, making the islands an import slave depot for the Portuguese Empire. Today the population is predominantly comprised of descendants of these slaves.
The social divisions embedded during the long colonial period persist today by way of six identifiable ethnic groups. These groups include: Mestiço, or mixed-blood; descendants of African slaves brought to the islands during the early years of settlement from Benin, Gabon, Congo, and Angola (these people also are known as "filhos da terra" or sons of the land); Angolares, reputedly descendants of Angolan slaves who survived a 1540 shipwreck and now earn their livelihood fishing; Forros, descendants of freed slaves when slavery was abolished; Servicais, contract laborers from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, living temporarily on the islands; Tongas, children of Servicais born on the islands; and Europeans, primarily Portuguese.
Language is equally influenced by the former feudal structure, but also by geographic location. São Toménse and Angolar are spoken on São Tomé, while Principense is spoken on Principe. Both are Creole languages based on Portuguese. They share an 88 percent lexical similarity and thus are easily mutually understood. Annobonese, a variety of Equatorial Guinean Creole, and Angolar are also both based on Portuguese and mutually understandable. The primary linguistic influence lies in those languages with a significant vocabulary stemming from Western Bantu languages brought by slaves. A full third of the Angolar lexicon is of Bantu origin, most likely from KiMbundu spoken in Angola. Over time, this linguistic difference has helped establish an ethnic distinction between Angolars and Forros who speak predominantly São Toménese.
The islanders have been absorbed largely into a common Luso-African culture. Almost all belong to the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Protestant or Seventh-Day Adventist Churches, which in turn retain close ties with churches in Portugal.
Society and Human Development
In comparison to their continental counterparts, São Toménese tend to benefit from a strong health infrastructure. Vaccinations are high, salt is iodized keeping goiter and anemia low; the two branches of the Central Hospital services virtually all of the population. However, cases of malaria have surged since the 1980s. This particularly virulent strain has made the disease far and away the number one cause of death in the country. The number of AIDS cases has been few to date, but public health campaigns to increase contraceptive use have met with only limited success raising concerns about the potential destruction the disease could bring in a short period of time.
Many social trends have been positive in São Tomé and Principe. Life expectancy is high at 68 years years of age. Infant mortality is rated at 38.36 deaths per 1000 births. Food security, while dependent on imports, is relatively high. Most importantly, literacy is high at 85 percent. While there is still a significant gender gap, it is diminishing women hold a third of professional positions in the country. They do, however, remain under-represented at economic and decision-making levels.
Note: About 7.1 percent of GDP in this country is spent on health expenditures.
One notable indicator used to measure a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main areas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a ranking of 169 countries, the HDI places Sao Tome and Principe in the medium human development category, at 127th place. Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief at www.countrywatch.com. See Bibliography for list of research sources.
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