Portuguese language in Africa The nation-states with Portuguese as an official language in Africa are referred to by the acronym PALOP () and include the following: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Portuguese is a primarily urban language having a reduced presence in rural areas, except for in Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, where the language is more widespread. South Africa also has approximately 300,000 speakers of Portuguese, primarily settlers from Madeira and white Angolans and Mozambicans who emigrated from 1975 onwards, following the independence of the former colonies. The civil wars in Angola and Mozambique also resulted in
São Tomean Portuguese São Tomean Portuguese São Toméan Portuguese ( or ) is a dialect of Portuguese spoken in São Tomé and Príncipe. It contains many archaic features in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, similar to Angolan Portuguese. It was once the dialect of the owners of the "roças" and the middle class, but now it is the dialect of the lower and middle classes, as the upper class often uses modern European Portuguese standard pronunciation, which is now also used by lower and middle classes. São Tomé is the third country in order of percentage of Portuguese speakers (after Portugal and Brazil),