Roça Água Izé is one of the most impressive and moving visits in São Tomé: a huge cocoa plantation-village on the east coast, almost an entire hamlet, with its historic hospital, its chapel, its manor houses and its workers' galleries, many of them now weathered and overgrown by tropical vegetation. It was the first large cocoa roça on the island and is still home to hundreds of descendants of its former 'serviçais'.
Visiting Água Izé means stepping right into the history of cocoa and the roças, the plantation system that made São Tomé the world's largest chocolate exporter in the early 20th century, at the cost of a forced-labour regime that bordered on slavery. This is where the islands' commercial cocoa was born, thanks to the Baron of Água Izé, and where one of the most modern hospitals in all of West Africa operated in its day.
This guide tells you how to visit Água Izé, what to see in its historic core, how to get there from the capital and how to make sense of the past, both fascinating and painful, of São Tomé's roças. A place frozen in time, between colonial nostalgia and the everyday life of its residents, ideal for anyone who wants to understand the soul of the chocolate country.
Água Izé was the first large cocoa plantation in São Tomé: it was here, around the mid-19th century, that commercial production of the cocoa that would make the islands famous began. Its founder, João Maria de Sousa e Almeida, was made the first Baron of Água Izé in 1868, becoming one of the first mixed-race nobles of the Portuguese empire. At its peak, in the early 20th century, the roça had kilometres of internal railway, more than 1.800 'serviçais' workers and one of the most modern hospitals in West Africa, opened in 1928. Its full story is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of the country: a tiny colonial capital in the shadow of the fort of São Sebastião, gateway to the great cocoa roças of the island's east.
Read the history of São Tomé city and the east →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Cocoa reached São Tomé and Príncipe at the start of the 19th century —according to tradition, around 1822, brought from Brazil by way of the island of Príncipe— but for decades it was little more than a garden curiosity. It was on the east coast of São Tomé island, on the Água Izé estate, that cocoa made the leap to large-scale commercial farming around the middle of the 19th century. That makes this roça the true cradle of São Tomé cocoa.
The man behind this change was João Maria de Sousa e Almeida, a wealthy merchant and landowner of mixed (Afro-European) descent and an exceptional figure in the colonial society of his time. He saw that the islands' volcanic soil and humid climate suited fine cocoa, and he pushed for systematic planting at Água Izé. This laid the foundations of what would become São Tomé's great chocolate industry.
He was so successful that in 1868 the Portuguese Crown made him the first Baron of Água Izé. He became one of the first mixed-race nobles in the Portuguese empire, a remarkable case in a deeply hierarchical and racist society. The roça that bore his title became the model to follow: over the following decades, dozens of plantations copied it and covered the archipelago in cocoa groves.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Água Izé had become one of the largest and most modern plantations in the archipelago, a real company town. By 1884 the roça already had some 50 kilometres of internal railway lines running across its roughly 80 km² of land. They carried the cocoa from the groves to the drying sheds and the shipping port.
At its peak in the early 20th century, more than 1,800 people lived and worked at Água Izé. They were 'serviçais' (contract workers) and 'tongas' (the children of those workers, born on the roça), under the management of José Maria de Sousa e Almeida, the baron's successor. It was a huge community with its own hierarchy, rules and internal economy, almost a miniature state run by the company.
The ultimate symbol of this splendour was the hospital, opened in 1928, which came to be considered one of the most modern and best-equipped in all of West Africa at the time. Its elegant outdoor staircase and stately portico showed the pride and economic power that cocoa had brought. São Tomé and Príncipe was then the world's largest cocoa exporter, and Água Izé was one of its most productive estates.
Behind Água Izé's architectural and economic splendour lay a brutal reality. Portugal had officially abolished slavery in its colonies in 1875-1876, but the roças kept running thanks to the 'serviçais'. These were workers brought from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde on contracts that in practice amounted to a new form of slavery. Many were tricked or forced into them and paid miserable wages, and despite the promises they almost never got to go home.
Living and working conditions were extremely harsh: exhausting workdays, high death rates from tropical diseases, punishments and tight control over every part of life on the roça. However modern the hospital was, it could not stop the loss of life that cocoa production demanded. The 'tongas', born on the plantation, in effect inherited their parents' status.
In the early 20th century, this reality caused an international scandal. European journalists and activists, among them the British writer Henry Nevinson, author of a famous report, exposed São Tomé cocoa as 'slave cocoa'. Under that pressure, major British chocolate makers such as Cadbury boycotted São Tomé cocoa around 1909. As the first and most emblematic roça, Água Izé was at the centre of a controversy that showed the world the human cost of chocolate.
During the 20th century, São Tomé's cocoa industry went into a slow decline. Production was worn down by exhausted soils, pests, falling world prices and, above all, an unjust labour model that never went away. Large roças like Água Izé, once machines for making money, began to lose momentum and pile up debts and problems.
The country declared independence on 12 July 1975, and the new socialist-leaning government nationalised the large plantations, turning them into state companies. State management could not reverse the decline either. With no investment, spare parts or markets, production fell even further. Many roças, Água Izé among them, were left neglected for years, with their buildings ageing and their residents living in ever poorer conditions.
Various reforms were tried in the following decades, including sharing out land among smallholders. Even so, most of the large roças were left as half-abandoned historic complexes. They are home to the descendants of the old 'serviçais', who still live in the old galleries and manor houses, holding on to the only home they have known.
Today Água Izé is both a majestic ruin and a living village. Perhaps a thousand descendants of those workers still live in the old manor houses and galleries, in a place where time seems to have stopped. The 1928 hospital with its staircase, the chapel, the square, the cocoa drying sheds and the houses sit alongside washing on the line, children playing and small food plots.
The roça has not entirely stopped producing: cocoa and coffee are still grown and processed here. São Tomé has also begun to win back an international reputation for its fine single-origin cocoas, some of the best in the world. At the same time, tourism has discovered the roças as a heritage treasure, and visits like the one to Água Izé let travellers learn this history first-hand.
Água Izé has become a symbol of the memory of São Tomé cocoa: its economic greatness, its human cost and the resilience of the communities who live there. Walking among its ageing buildings and talking to its people is a window onto five centuries of Atlantic history packed into a single plantation. This is the very first one, the place that gave these islands their fame as the land of chocolate.
