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The African Gourmet Foodways Archive

We treat African food as a primary historical document.

This is not a recipe site.

This is an archive where a single ingredient—like the brass wire that bought food for Stanley’s expedition—reveals systems of trade, power, and survival.

We publish tightly researched articles. Each piece answers a specific historical or anthropological question through the lens of food.

Recent Case Study: "The Dust After the Elephant: Polio, Disability, and the Architecture of Hunger in Kano: How a public health victory produced enduring barriers to food access for Nigeria’s disabled community

Upcoming Focus: Each article follows the evidence: clear argument, cited sources, and a narrative that connects a meal to the larger forces that shape society.

Our work is for researchers, students, and anyone who believes the history of a plate is as complex as the history of a nation.

Start with the latest research →

Staples, Survival & Food Systems

How everyday foods carry economies, shocks, and resilience.

• The Rice Shock: Liberia’s 1979 Staple Price Collapse
• The Fractured Chain: Collapse of the Somali Banana Food System
• The Agege Loaf: Lagos Street Bread as Urban Food System
• Ugali vs Fufu — Africa’s Beloved Staples

Labor, Gender & the Cost of Feeding

Food begins long before cooking — in bodies, risk, and time.

• A Trans-Regional Sensory Record of Women’s Firewood Labor
• She Feeds Africa – The Unseen Majority
• The Engineered Meal: Carceral Food Systems at Luzira Prison

Tools, Technique & Material Knowledge

The objects and movements that turn raw matter into food.

• The First Machine: The Mortar and Pestle as Cultural Transmitter
• The Kitchen Groove: Communal Rhythm and Sensory Knowledge
• Water Quality for Cooking: From Ancient Wells to Space-Age Filters

Plants, Animals & Ecological Intelligence

What Africans eat — and what eating reveals about environment.

• Gonimbrasia belina: The Explanation of the Mopane Worm Harvest
• Giant African Land Snail: Facts, Dangers, and Global Spread
• Tree Barks in West African Traditional Medicine
• Edible Vegetable Leaves: Nutrient-Dense Greens

Belief, Language & Meaning in Food

Where food crosses into cosmology, proverb, and prayer.

• Sacred Affirmations in Food Culture: Amen & Ashe
• Best Ten African Food Sayings, Proverbs and Quotes
• Pickled Eggs Are a Love Letter

Displacement, Power & Global Forces

How colonialism, aid, and institutions reshape diets.

• The Culinary Displacement of Ota Benga
• The Gastronomic Footprint: UN Peacekeeping & Food Life
• The Dust After the Elephant: Hunger & Disability in Kano

Meals, Recipes & Living Traditions

Recipes as cultural documents, not just instructions.

• Senegalese Chicken Vermicelli (Thiébou Yapp)
• Maggi Cubes: The Swiss Invention That Became African
• Bamia na Nazi: An Indian Ocean Culinary Map
• The Integrated Life of Idzila, Sorghum, and Sustenance

This is not a recipe site.
It is a record of how Africans feed themselves — and what that costs.