Black Success in Portugal: Entrepreneurial Innovation and Political Leadership Redefine Opportunity

By Yero S. Bah

For decades, the public narrative concerning people of African descent in Europe has been unduly restrictive, often confining their experiences to tales of marginalization, precarity, and struggle. This pervasive framing frequently overshadows genuine progress and burgeoning success across economic and political spheres. Recent data underscores the extent of this discriminatory environment: the 2023 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey revealed that 45% of Black individuals across 13 EU member states reported experiencing racial discrimination within the preceding five years.
In Portugal, specifically, the challenge is similarly acute. A 2023 report from the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) indicated that 16.1% of residents aged 18–74 had experienced discrimination, with 40.1% of those citing skin color, origin, or ethnicity as the reason.

Yet, a paradigm shift is underway. Across Lisbon, Porto, and other economic hubs, a dynamic generation of Black entrepreneurs, encompassing first-generation Africans and Afro-descendants, is actively building thriving ventures, launching startups, and forging new, vital economic space. Simultaneously, an emerging cohort of Black political figures is stepping into leadership, fundamentally redefining the scope of participation and representation. These are not narratives of mere survival; they are powerful testaments to ambition, success, and profound systemic change, sending an unequivocal message that entrenched stereotypes are rapidly becoming obsolete.

The journey of Black entrepreneurship in Portugal is characterized by resilience against pronounced structural barriers, particularly concerning finance and market access.

The 2022 AFROPRENEURS Report by DJASSI Africa exposes a critical under-representation of Black founders within Portugal’s startup ecosystem. Out of a sample of 1,059 startups, a mere 0.8% were led by Black founders. Furthermore, securing capital remains a significant obstacle: only approximately 30% of Black-led ventures reported obtaining any external funding. Strikingly, nearly half (49%) of their funding originated from informal sources, such as family and friends, clearly demonstrating systemic exclusion from formal investment channels.

The report identifies this funding gap as a consequence of two primary structural deficiencies: a deficit in financial investment literacy among many Black entrepreneurs and a scarcity of facilitators to connect them with relevant investors and support networks. This results in numerous potentially high-impact, Black-led startups struggling to scale, thereby limiting their contribution to Portugal’s broader innovation landscape.

Anna Martins, a 33-year-old Portuguese woman born to Cape Verdean parents, embodies this entrepreneurial drive. Following an international academic and professional path, including a Master’s in International Relations, Peace and Conflict, and a role as an International Relations Manager, she made the unconventional decision to leave her corporate career in Lisbon to join and expand her family’s restaurant business.

“I am a strong believer in generational wealth,” Martins states, explaining her choice to bypass societal pressures that often discourage such moves. Recognizing the systemic challenges, Martins founded Melo Supply, an organization dedicated to mapping Black businesses and startups across Portugal. The goal is to facilitate essential networking and connect them with corporate businesses and institutions. Martins articulates a core challenge: a lack of access to funding, which she believes is particularly acute for Black entrepreneurs who often lack affluent family backgrounds. “We started our businesses out of necessity,” she notes.

She urges her community to adopt a “go-getter” mindset and calls for mutual support. Drawing a comparison, she argues: “Africans are way more entrepreneurial than we in Europe… blacks in Europe settled a little bit more in comfort, while the Africans in Africa are always operating out of necessity to invent solutions for themselves and their societies.”

Martin’s own family restaurant, Fam Kitchen, exemplifies perseverance. Initially bootstrapped due to a lack of bank history and access to loans, the family invested their savings and built the business with their own hands. Today, it operates successfully in Avenida Liberdade, one of Lisbon’s most affluent districts, serving a diverse customer base. Martins points out that the lack of ethnicity data collection by the Portuguese government hinders the ability of Black entrepreneurs to accurately gauge market potential and business viability.

She is Eliana Silva. She is a Journalism and Communications Specialist and black literature writer. Silva is also into branding


Eliana Silva, born in Lagos, Southern Portugal, to an Angolan mother and a Portuguese father, is using her expertise in journalism and digital marketing to challenge implicit bias. As a globetrotter and writer, she sees herself as a storyteller, stating: “Regardless of the format or area, what connects people, brands, or products is stories.” 

Her 2020 children’s book, “Bina, the Discoverer of the Indian Ocean,” introduced new, Black literary figures into Portuguese literature, a direct response to her own childhood experience of lacking Black role models.

Silva identifies implicit racism as a significant obstacle, manifesting as a high level of mistrust toward Black-owned businesses, often leading to assumptions of “poor quality, fragile structures, and inadequate human resources.” She, too, reiterates the difficulty in accessing financing and highlights the recent inclusion of financial education in school curricula as a factor for the historical lack of entrepreneurial incentive.

“The fact that there weren’t many people like me also contributed to my seeking out more references on my own initiative to try to understand what it meant to be a black woman,” Silva reflects.

“Visibility, equity, and community-driven growth are the foundation for lasting success.”- Vitor Sanchez. He is a creative artist and entrepreneur in Lisbon, Portugal.

Similarly, Vitor Sanchez, a Portuguese man of Cape Verdean descent, found courage and independence through entrepreneurship. After witnessing talented Black workers in construction struggle with limited access to funding and markets, he launched Bazofo, a sustainable, screen-printed clothing brand rooted in identity. He notes that while support from Black consumers sustains his business within his neighborhood, access to the wider Portuguese market presents persistent challenges, including intense scrutiny over legitimacy.

“Visibility, equity, and community-driven growth are the foundation for lasting success,” Sanchez asserts.

She is Paula Cardoso, a journalist and founder of Afrolink, a platform that connects blacks, businesses, and entrepreneurs in Portugal. She is also a human rights activist.

Paula Cardoso, a media entrepreneur and human rights activist born in Mozambique, is a powerful force for change and visibility. After moving to Lisbon at age three, she says, “From childhood, I had to educate myself to excel just to be tolerated and to find ways to survive in a society marked by racism.”

In 2017, she founded African Force, a series of children’s books featuring characters who resemble African and Afro-descendant children to promote social inclusion. Following this, she launched Afrolink in 2019, a digital platform with over 9,000 followers on Instagram dedicated to enhancing the representation and visibility of Afro-descendant professionals. Afrolink’s mission is to foster connections, alliances, and support within the community.

Since 2021, Afrolink has organized over 30 monthly and occasional gatherings for Black entrepreneurs. The platform directly addresses the lack of ethnicity data in Portugal, which Cardoso, Martins, and others identify as a core impediment to understanding and addressing marginalization.

“My mission is to highlight the diverse achievements of Black professionals across all fields, demonstrating that our community extends far beyond roles such as cleaners, construction workers, or restaurant staff,” Cardoso states.

Cardoso advocates for integrating discussions on how racism is woven into the fabric of Portuguese culture into the national curriculum, emphasizing the need for affirmative actions to correct historical inequalities.

The movement to redefine opportunity is equally forceful in the political arena. A new generation of Black leaders is actively challenging the historical under-representation in Portuguese governance.

The 2019 election marked a historic turning point with the election of Joacine Katar Moreira (Livre Party), Beatriz Gomes Dias (Bloco de Esquerda), and Romualda Fernandes (Socialist Party). These three women, with origins in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, became the first Black women of the new generation to secure seats in the Assembly of the Republic.

During their term, they successfully pushed debates on migrant rights, anti-racist policies, and historical reparations, establishing an undeniable presence in Portuguese political history despite facing structural barriers and overt racism.

This wave of representation continues to build momentum. Eva Cruzeiro, a rapper and activist of Angolan descent born in Portugal, entered the political arena as a candidate for the Socialist Party (PS) in 2025. Her ambition is to represent communities “who do not see themselves in politics,” offering a voice to Afro-descendant groups often excluded from mainstream political discourse. Her candidacy signifies a crucial step in diversifying national politics and increasing youth involvement.

The success stories of Blacks and Afro-descendants, from the sustained growth of Fam Kitchen and the community-building of Afrolink to the legislative breakthroughs of the 2019 elected cohort, demonstrate a powerful defiance of historical and systemic barriers. These entrepreneurs and leaders are not just succeeding; they are actively redefining opportunity in the 21st century by building their own wealth, shaping the national culture, and forcing institutional change.

To accelerate this transformation, entrepreneurs like Eliana Silva call on the government to lessen bureaucracy, offer tax breaks in the initial years of business operation, and implement more comprehensive business acceleration programs offering tools in accounting, marketing, and human resources management.

The collective call from this powerful generation is clear: systemic change requires the courage to collect ethnic data, the political will for affirmative action, and the commitment of the wider society to recognize that the growth of Black-led ventures is a fundamental contribution to the vitality and future of the entire Portuguese economy.

This story and project were published in collaboration with Africa No Filter (ANF)