While in Lisbon, Alda da Graça met students from other Portuguese colonies and joined a student association called the Casa dos Estudantes do Império. In 1951, she founded Centro de Estudos Africanos with other students interested in nationalism, including Mário Pinto de Andrade and Agostinho Neto of Angola, Noémia de Sousa and Marcelino dos Santos of Mozambique, and Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau.[1]