Where we work
Ascendere works at Principe (Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe), a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, with 7500 inhabitants and located 140 kilometers away from São Tomé, the main island, and 225 Km off the northwestern coast of Gabon.
The main economic activity is a subsistence agriculture faced with a very small local market, a non-competitive production and an artisanal fishing.
It is a society with obvious signs of acculturation and disintegration, with a weakened economy, a dysfunctional market and a virtual autonomy. The situation is aggravated by its double insularity and an unequal share of public aid to the development.
They are poor but, by contrast, they detain some of the main conditions necessary to initiate the way of development on their own – a fertile land, a mild climate with rainfall during most of the year and a rich and diversified forest – but they lack organization, leadership, investment, vocational training and technology.
