Compendium Of Forgotten Foods In Africa

The World Wide Fund for Nature defines a food system as “the complete set of people, institutions, activities, processes, and infrastructure involved in producing and consuming food for a given population.” (WWF, 2017). The food system has a bearing on human capital development, provision of jobs, industrial growth, structural transformation and ecosystem services. As in many other parts of the world, the landscape of African food systems is fraught with fragility and fails to deliver on these key developmental outcomes. Transforming food systems in Africa is an imperative for the realization of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which now has a delivery timeline of less than a decade. A sustainability framework must underguard any attempts at food systems transformations. For example, Africa must provide food and nutrition security to its rapidly expanding population in perpetuity without engendering adverse environmental, social and economic externalities. The massive endowment of the continent with extensive arable land and diverse agro-ecosystems teeming with rich flora makes sustainable food systems a realizable dream. Indeed, Indigenous communities across Africa have used a number of locally adapted crops for millennia mainly for nutrition, medicinal and ornamental purposes. Unfortunately, many of these crops, have been progressively substituted with imported genotypes favoured by industrial agriculture. Pervasive monoculture of the exotic crops and increasingly standardized diets have contributed in part to utter denigration of the indigenous crops, earning them the appellation of "forgotten crops.”

Africa is home to a diversity of indigenous food crops that are locally adapted and less fastidious than exotic cultivars. Indigenous foods are foods of plant and animal origin that naturally exist in specific agro-ecological domains and are produced and consumed as part of traditional diets. Although indigenous foods have the potential to sustainably provide the much needed dietary nutrients to various communities across Africa, they have suffered progressive loss of cultural image, denigration, and utter neglect, being largely substituted with exotic foods. Consequently, they have earned the unenviable appellations of "forgotten", "neglected" or "orphan" foods due to the fact that they have received relatively little or no policy and research attention – especially towards their genetic improvement and value chain development.

Describes different foods from the African continent.

"Seven grains of paradise tells the fascinating and much neglected story about many kinds of food--and also delicacies--in Africa, a continent that gets precious little credit for anything, least of all its intricate cuisines, farms, farming know-how, food cultures and its ability to feed itself. It shouldn't be surprising that Africa has all of these, but for many it may be. Centuries of disparaging judgements and a half century of media reports churning out images of famine, disease and conflict on the continent, have eclipsed the facts that Africans have marvellous local foods and culinary cultures, and that small family farms still feed most of the continent. The narrative of the book is driven by Baxter's personal quest to learn about some fascinating and new (to her) foods in a handful of countries in sub-Sahara Africa and collect the stories these tell about the continent's farms, its markets, and its people. Her guides and tutors are the people who grow, sell, buy, prepare, and serve the foods. They help her explore the riddles of a continent better known for hunger than for its food, and why that is. It draws on stories collected over the more than thirty years that she has lived and worked in Africa, and builds on these with meticulous research. From the fabled city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, to the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, from the savannah of northern Ghana, to the rainforests of Central Africa, readers are invited along on a delightful journey of learning and eating--and some drinking too, of invigorating indigenous beverages, brews and palm wine straight from the trees. The culinary journey takes the reader down garden paths, into forests that double as farms, through the chaos of markets and into modest little roadside eateries. The real surprise here is not that Africa should boast such a dazzling array of delicious dishes and culinary traditions and indigenous foods; it is that the rest of the world knows so little about them. Baxter, a journalist, anthropologist, development researcher and writer, and Senior Fellow with the independent think tank, the Oakland Institute, does not shy away from the realities of hunger and poverty and the real lack of amenities, health facilities, and sanitation on the continent. While the book highlights the complexities and delights of African foods and family farms, it also documents the growing risks they face. So even if Seven grains of paradise is intimate and often light in tone, it is also an important and eye-opening work, thoroughly researched. The stories feed the overarching narrative of what makes for healthy food and farms and communities--what they are and how to maintain them on a continent where "slow food" and "local food" are still the normal fare for so many. With its focus on food, the book is timely and likely to garner much attention as the world confronts rising food prices, and the future of food--and the farms that grow it--in the face of climate change."--

Foods of Sierra Leone and other West African countries is a unique cookbook focusing on West African foods many of which have a global appeal. It is loaded with overwhelming details about these foods as well as interesting personal food stories that will delight children and adults alike. In addition, the book exposes the reader to many delectably tasty recipes for dishes like joloff rice, various soups and stews, the fascinating groundnut soups and stews, the delicious cassava leaf sauce, okra sauces, beans sauces, other mixed sauces and many more including vegetarian variations of some of the sauces. Food lovers will learn how traditionally Western vegetables like spinach, collard green, swiss chard and many others can be cooked using West African recipes. All these are lavishly presented by a West African national who was born and brought up in the region, and has lived in the region cooking and eating these foods for more than 50 years.

This report is the second in a series of three evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes the characteristics of 18 little-known indigenous African vegetables (including tubers and legumes) that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists and policymakers and in the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each vegetable to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each species is described in a separate chapter, based on information gathered from and verified by a pool of experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume III African fruits.

Excerpt from The Food Resources of Africa Africa, an important contributor to the world's agricultural sup ply, has now more than ever a vital share in the food economy of the world. The Japanese conquest of the Far East has deprived the United Nations of important food resources, and it is necessary to look for new fields to increase the production in those territories at the command of the United Nations. Africa's proximity to the major battle fronts makes it an area particularly strategic in location from which to supplement the depleted food supply, and the African natives contribute to this task in no small measure. Thus, the meager fat rations of Great Britain have come to depend largely on the amount of groundnuts, palm oil, and palm kernels which West Africa can furnish, and the Middle Eastern armies are supplied with food from East African territories. The fact that, despite Africa's importance, only scant information about its food production is available makes the situation potentially dangerous. Not only might valuable food sources be ignored, but conversely Africa's productivity might be overestimated and lead to disastrous local famines if drained too much, as, indeed, occurred in some East African territories early this year. For the United States, which contributes such a large share of food to both Allied and conquered nations, it is of special interest to learn and know about those food resources which now or in the near future may be available in other parts of the world. These considerations prompted the decision of the Committee on African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania to undertake a program of Food Research. The present studies by Dr. Githens and Mr. Wood intend to give a general survey of Africa's agricultural resources, while in later volumes of the African Handbooks more detailed studies, both regarding specific areas and individual cr0ps. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.