Food Technology And Culture In Africa

This book is a multidisciplinary exposition of how scholars from various disciplines research food. The chapters unravel the crosscutting themes in the role of food in everyday realities of African societies. Food remains indispensable to humanity for a good healthy and quality life but accessibility is shrouded by poor quality food and food fraud thereby making the available food unsafe for consumption by the Nigerian citizens, and of course by people around the world. The underlying causes of this have largely been attributed to poverty and acquisitive economic gains, and to some extent poor food handling by consumers. In Nigeria, the state of poverty is so severe that the largest proportion of the citizens' daily and/or monthly income goes on food, which is barely enough to access quality and nutritional food. Consequently, majority of the citizens seek and take up poor quality food that might come their way. In the light of drive for unsafe food, the food fraudsters had capitalised on the poor Nigerians to make illegally adulterated and poor quality food available at cheaper prices. This situation has not only endangered the food distribution system and quality of consumed nutrition in Nigeria, but as equally put the health status of Nigerians at risk through long-term exposure and build-up of chronically toxic contaminants in the body.

A rich ethnographic portrait of food-provisioning processes in a contemporary African city, offering valuable lessons about the powerful roles of gender, migration, exchange, sex, and charity in food acquisition. Based on anthropologist Karen Coen Flynn's study of Mwanza, Tanzania, this work draws on the personal accounts of over 350 market vendors, low, middle and high-income consumers, urban farmers as well as those, including children, who live on the streets. This strikingly original work offers interdisciplinary appeal to a broad audience of both students and professionals interested in anthropology, African studies, urban studies, gender studies and development economics.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this book Renata explored the food culture and lifestyles of early humans, and of the Khoi-Khoin. She combined many decades of knowledge as a nutritionist and food culture expert with multidisciplinary research of over 15 years ? bringing together aspects of archaeology, palaeontology, botany, genetics, history, languages, culture and much more, in a unique way. While scientifically sound, it is beautifully illustrated and a true collector?s piece. In 2015 Renata self-published the book through Penstock Publishing. The first print-run of 500 copies was soon sold out ? mostly to friends, family and fans. We have now reprinted the book to make Coetzee?s unique work available to a wider audience. Academics, researchers and food experts can build further on her research. Communities will benefit from further work to build understanding among various cultures and on the history of our ?First Peoples?. Indigenous plants with culinary and agricultural potential can be further developed for food production. Renata?s research included interviews with many elderly Khoi-Khoin women and men in various regions, about the details of their food sources and uses. A special feature in the book is that wherever possible, the Khoi and Afrikaans names of plants and animals are given, with English and scientific names. About 250 fine photographs and over 80 illustrations of edible indigenous plants ? as well as maps and Khoi traditions ? make the book a journey of discovery, bringing to life the linkages between evolution and culinary history over millennia. The book also offers valuable lessons in terms of the nutritional value of many indigenous foods, food security and sustainability. The DST/NRF Centre of Excellence: Food Security, hosted by UWC and the University of Pretoria, has supported the reprint of the book. They, together with the Agricultural Research Council, intend doing further research on indigenous food products identified in Coetzee?s extensive work on the various food cultures in South Africa.

East African, notably, Ethiopian, cuisine is perhaps the most well-known in the States. This volume illuminates West, southern, and Central African cuisine as well to give students and other readers a solid understanding of how the diverse African peoples grow, cook, and eat food and how they celebrate special occasions and ceremonies with special foods. Readers will also learn about African history, religions, and ways of life plus how African and American foodways are related. For example, cooking techniques such as deep frying and ingredients such as peanuts, chili peppers, okra, watermelon, and even cola were introduced to the United States by sub-Sahara Africans who were brought as slaves. Africa is often presented as a monolith, but this volume treats each region in turn with representative groups and foodways presented in manageable fashion, with a truer picture able to emerge. It is noted that the boundaries of many countries are imposed, so that food culture is more fluid in a region. Commonalities are also presented in the basic format of a meal, with a starch with a sauce or stew and vegetables and perhaps some protein, typically cooked over a fire in a pot supported by three stones. Representative recipes, a timeline, glossary, and evocative photos complete the narrative.

Fermented foods play a major role in human nutrition and health, given the addition of flavor, improvement of texture, preservation against spoilage, and ease of digestion due to the fermentation process. This book provides information about the chemistry and bioactive compounds of African fermented food products, including their nutritional value and minor constituents. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, from the microorganisms involved in spontaneous fermentation to food safety considerations and quality assessment. The text can be used as a practical manual to better understand the nutritional and medicinal uses of various African fermented foods, as well as prepare recipes and product labels.

Believing that the intellectual enterprise called philosophy is essentially a part of the cultural as well as historical experience of a people, that the concepts and problems that occupy the attention of philosophers placed in different cultural spaces or historical times generally derive directly from those spaces and times, and that philosophy, in turn, has been most relevant to the development of human cultures, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye gives reflective attention in this book to some of the concepts and problems that in his view feature most prominently in the contemporary African cultural, social, political, and moral experience. Such concepts and problems include the following: political legitimacy, development, culture and the pursuit of science and technology, political corruption, democracy, representation and the politics of inclusion, the status of cultural values in national orientation, understanding globalization, and others. It is these topics that are covered in the essays collected in this book. The unrelenting pursuit of the speculative activity by the philosopher in most cases eventuates in normative proposals; these normative proposals often embody a vision-a vision of an ideal human society in terms of its values, politics, and culture. Vision, understood here, has human-not supernatural or divine-origination and involvement and requires action by human beings in order for it to come into reality. A vision may derive from sustained critical evaluation of a culture or some elements of it. Gyekye attempts an articulation of the visions of the essays contained in the book. Even though philosophical ideas and concerns are originally inspired by and worked out in a cultural milieu, it does not necessarily follow, Gyekye strongly believes, that the relevance of those ideas and insights is to be tetheed to the cultures that produced them. For, more often than not, the relevance of those ideas, or at least some of them, transcends the confines of their own times and cultures and can be appreciated by other societies, or cultures, or generational epochs. This trans-cultural or trans-epochal or meta-contextual appeal or attraction of philosophical ideas and insights spawned by a particular culture or cluster of cultures or in specific historical times is to be put down to our common human nature-including our basic human desires and aspirations. Thus, most of the essays published here should be of interest to the global community-i.e., to cultures and societies beyond the African.

This book advances alternative approaches to understanding media, culture and technology in two vibrant regions of the Global South. Bringing together scholars from Africa and the Caribbean, it traverses the domains of communication theory, digital technology strategy, media practice reforms, and corporate and cultural renewal. The first section tackles research and technology with new conceptual thinking from the South. The book then looks at emerging approaches to community digital networks, online diaspora entertainment, and video gaming strategies. The volume then explores reforms in policy and professional practice, including in broadcast television, online newspapers, media philanthropy, and business news reporting. Its final section examines the role of village-based folk media, the power of popular music in political opposition, and new approaches to overcoming neo-colonial propaganda and external corporate hegemony. This book therefore engages critically with the central issues of how we communicate, produce, entertain, and build communities in 21st-century Africa and the Caribbean.