[1][2] Slave trade (1440-1593) For instance, there are early reports of Sudanese working in Portugal dating back to 1440 and of Ethiopian people living in Porto in 1466.

[11] Most enslaved people imported into Portugal came from sub-Saharan Africa, including Arguin, Cape Verde, Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, Saint George of the Mine, Angola, and Mozambique.

Since 1486, when King João II established the Casa dos Escravos ("House of Slaves") in Lisbon, all incoming shipments of captives were processed, assessed, taxed, and sold there.

The colonies were abolished in 1951, transformed into overseas provinces by the Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar and became integral parts of Portugal.

These communities arrived in continental Portugal after the independence of the African overseas provinces in the mid-1970s and after the Portuguese economic growth in the late 1980s.

One of the primary settlement areas for communities in Portugal, especially the Cape Verdean one, were the lands north of Lisbon, near the present-day parish of Benfica.

Starting from the 1970s, numerous clandestine neighborhoods (bairros) emerged here, often lacking basic services and plagued by crime-related issues.

[16] For instance, in Amadora only around 10,000 people used to live in shanty towns such as: Despite initial difficulty during the resettlements, many Afro-Portuguese people have now access to enhanced opportunities and some popular neighbourhoods built for housing them, such as Outurela and Casal da Mira, have been praised for their succeeding in actually bettering the living conditions of citizens once neglected.

[48] Immigration to Portugal, historically low, soared after the country's accession to the EU in 1986 and increased significantly starting in the late 1990s, also under form of human trafficking.

[59] Moreover, as Portugal started returning tuition fees to those who come to study and then stay in the country to work student visas are in high demand.

[96][97][98][99] According to the Portuguese Foreigners and Borders Services, in December 2023, there were approximately 184,159 people holding the citizenship of a Sub-Saharan African country legally residing in Portugal, and thus accounting for 1.73% of the total population.

For instance, if a person holding a citizenship of a Sub-Saharan country marries a Portuguese national (regardless of their "ethnic origin"), the children of this union are not detected in official statistics.

Still this legislation had special clauses: Portuguese nationality was granted to citizens proceeding from Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and East Timor, as well as those born under Portuguese administration in Goa, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Macau if legally living in Portugal for six years.

[121] The arrival of these black Africans in Portugal, coupled with their difficulty in accessing full citizenship, enhanced, from the 1970s onwards, the processes of ethnic and racial discrimination.

[129] In 2016, the UN committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination visited Portugal and recommended that Portugal implement specific measures for the Afro-descendent community, in as in cases where some black Portuguese, today full adults, are without citizenship even in cases where siblings can be full Portuguese citizens, such as those born before 1981 or after their parents become legal migrants.