São Tomé and Príncipe is located within the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) zone, which puts it at a time offset of zero hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+0). This means that when it's 12:00 pm in London, it's also 12:00 pm in São Tomé and Príncipe, given that London operates on GMT during non-daylight saving months. São Tomé and Príncipe does not observe Daylight Saving Time, and so the time remains consistent throughout the year, without an hour change.

Time zone for dummies

Imagine the world as a giant, round cake, and the cake has different slices. Each slice of cake has its own special time. These time slices are called "time zones." The whole cake (world) is cut into 24 slices because there are 24 hours in a day. When the sun is shining on one part of the cake, people are awake and going about their day. Meanwhile, on the side of the cake where it's dark, people are getting ready for bed or already sleeping.

Now, imagine there's a line around the middle of the cake; it's a very important line called Coordinated Universal Time or UTC for short. It's like the starting point where we begin counting the time for each slice. If you live on the slice where it starts, the time there is just the regular UTC, like the number zero. But as you go east (to the right when you're looking at a map), each slice adds one number, so it goes up to UTC+1, UTC+2, and so on, all the way up to UTC+12. If you go west (to the left on the map), it's like going backwards in numbers, all the way down to UTC-1, UTC-2, down to UTC-12.

São Tomé and Príncipe, just like one of the houses on our street, has its own time zone. It's in the UTC+0 slice, which means they don't add or take away any time from the UTC starting line. So if someone in London (which is also in the UTC+0 slice when they're not using Daylight Saving Time) is eating lunch at 12:00 pm, someone in São Tomé and Príncipe is eating lunch at the same time too!