A messy political breakup in São Tomé and Príncipe

Issue #395: This week, I want to take you somewhere most international news outlets barely look: São Tomé and Príncipe. It's one of Africa's smallest countries, but its president just pulled off one of this year's wildest political comebacks: He broke with the party that made him president, fired its prime minister (a move later ruled unconstitutional), then ran again, and won anyway.

Also this week: Why Argentina has no Black footballers on its national team, Indigenous rap about one of the Amazon's darkest chapters, a call for slavery reparations in the Caribbean, China's surprising role in preventing an oil shock in the middle of the Iran war, and why Mexico is warning its citizens about lettuce in the US.

This newsletter features contributions by intern Pia Monroy Rodriguez and has been edited by Jonathan Ramsay.

São Tomé and Príncipe just got through a big political divorce

Refresher: São Tomé and Príncipe (STP) is one of Africa's smallest countries. It consists of two volcanic islands in the Gulf of Guinea, about 250 km (155 miles) off the coast of Gabon. Around 240,000 people live there. Portuguese is the official language, the currency is the dobra, and the capital is São Tomé.

What happened:
On Sunday, people voted in the first round of the presidential election, and on Monday, the preliminary results came in (this is also why I am sending this issue a day later). It's official: President Carlos Vila Nova has won a second five-year term. He received more than 55% of the vote, meaning he cleared the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff (the second round). His main challenger, Nito Viegas D'Abreu, won just over 41%.

Why this matters: STP is one of Africa's least populous countries and one of the continent's most stable democracies. But for a while there, the headlines seemed to suggest it was going in a different direction.

Good to know: STP's political system is similar to Portugal's (Portugal colonized STP for almost 500 years), which means there are two important political leaders: the president (who is the head of state, appoints the prime minister, can dissolve parliament under certain circumstances, but does not run everyday government) and the prime minister (who runs the government, manages ministries, and is responsible for day-to-day politics). So, for the sake of the country's political stability, it's very important these two get along...

Tell me more:
At first glance, it looked like a typical election: one candidate against another. But that would be a very incomplete news headline. In reality, this was about a president who won reelection after breaking with the very party that brought him to power, broke the constitution by firing the prime minister, and still, people voted for him anyway. The party, ADI, is also still the largest party in parliament today. Basically, if STP politics had an official soundtrack, Kanye West would be its main artist feature. (Please don't make me explain this joke. It's already quite risqué as it is.)

Did you know? One presidential candidate was barred from running. Domingos Monteiro ("Nino") was born on São Tomé. However, his parents came from Cape Verde and never became São Toméan citizens. The Constitutional Court ruled he therefore did not qualify. On a not-so-related note, he's been the president of the São Toméan Football Federation since 2015.

What the f happened in STP these past few years?
It's not a given that we all know what's happening there, so here's a quick rundown of STP politics for those of you who have no clue what's going on in this part of the world:

• In 2021, Carlos Vila Nova became president with the support of the ADI party, which was the country's largest and most powerful party. [ADI is a center to center-right party: all about private investment and Christian values; that said, São Tomé and Príncipe's politics don't map neatly onto European left-right politics. It's really more about personalities and alliance than deep ideological disagreements.]
• A few years later, he had a major disagreement with the party's leader, Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada. He said Trovoada was too often abroad and wasn't really working well with him.
• In 2025, Vila Nova fired Trovoada from office, which caused a political crisis because many people questioned whether the president had the constitutional power to do that.
• After that, the ADI and Vila Nova became enemies.
• So in this election, Vila Nova no longer represented the party that helped elect him. Instead, he ran without a party, as an independent.
• Meanwhile, ADI supported a different candidate, Nito D'Abreu. This is him speaking.
• In early 2026, the Constitutional Court ruled that the president's dismissal of the Prime Minister had indeed been unconstitutional.
• However, to avoid creating an even bigger chaos, the judges decided not to reverse everything that had happened. The ruling applied only going forward, so the new government stayed in office.

Quick history lesson: Unlike most African countries, these islands were uninhabited before Europeans arrived. In the late 1400s, the Portuguese discovered them and turned them into a colony. Portugal then brought enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations, and later, cocoa and coffee plantations. For centuries, the islands were deeply connected to the Atlantic slave trade. The country gained independence from Portugal in 1975, after Portugal's dictatorship collapsed. In 2024, the STP government asked for reparations.

Like many newly independent African countries, São Tomé and Príncipe initially became a one-party socialist state. By the early 1990s, it peacefully introduced multi-party democracy. Unlike many countries in the region, it has generally avoided civil war, military coups (there was only one in 2022), and...