Easy Recipe 

Make Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Cook sweet potato leaves in recipes just as you would spinach. Blend sweet potato leaves in smoothies, make sweet potato leaves stir-fry or eat sweet potato leaves washed and raw. Sweet potato leaves are eaten raw and cooked; add sweet potatoes to your salad or mix them in with spinach, sweet potato leaves go well with any meat dish such as chicken, beef, pork, or fish.

Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Sweet potato leaves are universally eaten throughout Africa in too many recipes to count. Sweet potato leaves are edible and delicious with a soft texture that tastes like kale or spinach. The best way to cook sweet potatoes is just to simply sauté them with a little bit of onion, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Sweet potato leaves have five times more vitamin C than other greens such as spinach. Sweet potatoes do not have a particular season but are grown year-round in the United States; however they are at their peak sweetness during the winter months from December to February. 

Uganda leads the way in sweet potato production representing half the African supply followed by Nigeria and Tanzania. In Uganda sweet potatoes are usually harvested during the first rainy season from March to June. Uganda, one of seven African countries which the Equator runs through, is in Africa’s Equatorial region, a region of the Earth surrounding the equator with a humid tropical climate. Sweet potatoes are a hardy crop and can grow in many different climates.

Bigger is not better when it comes to sweet potatoes, choose small to medium sweet potatoes that are heavy for their size. Unless your sweet potatoes are particularly small and smooth, remove the skins with a peeler. Sweet potato tubers are traditionally baked, roasted or mashed, but they can also be added to stews, soups or curries.

Picking Sweet Potato Leaves

Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves

Ingredients

4 large handfuls sweet potato leaves, chopped

1 chopped red bell pepper

1 bunch chives, chopped

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Pepper to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions

Add ingredients into a large pot and saute about 3 minutes. Serve with our Ugandan Mugoyo recipe below.

Ugandan Mugoyo Sweet Potato and Beans Recipe

Our Ugandan mugoyo recipe is a very popular recipe made of boiled beans and sweet potato mixed together served with your perfectly seasoned sweet potato leaves recipe above. Mugoyo is similar to refried beans with mashed sweet potatoes mixed into the recipe.

Ugandan Mugoyo Sweet Potato and Beans Recipe

Ingredients

3 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled

2 handfuls sweet potato leaves, chopped

1 can black-eyed peas, liquid drained

½ cup vegetable broth

Directions

In a large pot boil the sweet potatoes and beans, then mash, add the sweet leaves and vegetable broth. Serve with your perfectly seasoned sweet potato leaves recipe above. 

Did you know?

The truth is what you call a yam is most likely a sweet potato. Yams and sweet potatoes are both flowering plants however, that is their only relation. 

Compared to sweet potatoes, yams are starchier and drier. The mix-up between yams and sweet potatoes began in the United States when firm varieties of sweet potatoes were grown by African slaves before soft varieties. 

They called the soft sweet potatoes yams because they resembled the yams in Africa. Therefore, soft sweet potatoes were referred to as yams to distinguish them from the new firm varieties.

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Borno State’s capital in Maiduguri northeastern Nigeria had many internally displaced persons (IDP) camps which were home to thousands of people who fled their homes because war had been declared on the everyday people. 

Internally Displaced Persons means persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.

Life in an IDP camp

In IDP camps every inch of space counted. Jerrycans and cooking pots were stacked on top of each other and clothes hung from the roof. Living in an IDP camp means you have to start your life from zero, and you may not have a safe place to live once you arrive. 

One night in May 2020, Awofaa, a 38-year-old widow was sleeping with her three children inside their village home in herding village in northeast Nigeria's Borno state when they heard gunfire close by. “We had to run immediately, there was no time to take anything but just the clothes on us. Our people were caught off guard by the gunmen. We lived in an open field with nowhere to hide,” she says. 

Jerrycans at an IDP camp

Once living in a 6x8 tarp tent, a little taller than the size of a refrigerator and wider than the length of a twin or full-size mattress, Awofaa was living with her three children in Maiduguri, Gubio IDP camp afraid to return to her village. She is not prepared to face the challenges to come, both financially and mentally.

On any given day she could be found cleaning their small kitchen or sweeping the path outside their home. However, the Nigerian government decided in January 2022 to close all IDP camps in Maiduguri Nigeria. Since the outbreak of violence Awofaa, like many thousands of other families, have spent years living in IDP camps in Borno State’s capital in Maiduguri Nigeria.

In Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in northeast Nigeria, conflict is affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Nigeria's Borno state is the epicenter of an ongoing insurgency of criminal gangs, Boko Haram, Islamic State for West Africa Province and sporadic attackers on motorcycles fighting with Nigeria's armed forces and ordinary citizens leaving over 300,000 dead. 

IDP camps in Borno State’s capital in Maiduguri Nigeria

Especially in war-torn Borno state, for the past ten years there has been bloody conflict. Violence and insecurity are causing mass movements of people, with over 2.8 million living in camps or host communities within Nigeria and tens of thousands seeking refuge in neighboring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

With over 182 million people, Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa and the seventh largest in the world. Thirteen Maiduguri IDP camps were opened seven years ago and disbanded in December 2021 however, seven informal communities or slums remain. 

The Nigerian government M.D. Northeast Development Commission states that peace has come to Borno State and conflict has been replaced by non violence therefore IDPs can return to a normal life outside of the camps. Residents of Maiduguri informal communities are officially squatters and do not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use the land, the land belongs to the government of Nigeria.

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