Post-Independence Development of National Cuisines inWest Africa:

Diaspora and Western Influences

Brandi D. Simpson Miller

History 8410

Dr. Harcourt T. Fuller

December 8, 2012

This time last year Nando’s, a South African fast food

giant, aired a commercial that mocked President Robert Mugabe of

Zimbabwe to promote its six-pack chicken meal for the Christmas

season. Some of the highlights of Mugabe’s reminiscence in the

commercial include him playing water gun-fight with Libyan

politician Gaddafi; making ‘sand angels’ on the beach with former

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein; pushing South Africa’s former

president Pick Botha on a swing, and recreating a romantic

Titanic tank scene with fallen Ugandan despot Idi Amin.1

This funny commercial raises issues about trade, the

globalization of labor, changing populations, transforming

environments, and the beginning of a global culture as it relates

to food. Africa has had a long history of food exchange. Up

until the present day, an authentic cuisine of Africa is hard to 1 “South African Fast Food Chain Takes Down Funny Mugabe Advert - Forbes.” Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2011/12/02/south-african-fast-food-chain-takes-down-funny-mugabe-advert/ (Accessed December 5, 2012).

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identify as constant borrowing has been taking place since the

time that caravans were used in portions of the trans-Asian Silk

Road trade. In more contemporary history, much of the discussion

surrounding food in West Africa has been connected with the

development of nationalistic fervor in post-colonial, post-World

War II movements for independence. Despite the varied cultural

influences, there has been the emergence of the development of a

national cuisine for several West African countries since the

1960’s. Newly independent countries flag their national identity

by promoting cuisines that they claim are uniquely theirs. Among

these, the Anglophone colonies of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria,

Mauritius, and South Africa have published enough cookbooks to

conduct a review.

The development of cuisines reflects the dominant ideologies

of a society. The drive to promote a national cuisine is proof

that the influence of imperialism is still present. This push has

been external, most principally promulgated by Africans in the

Diaspora, who have been a driving force in the imposition of

their Western conception of nationhood on recently independent

states. One could argue that the promotion of a national cuisine

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in West African countries like Ghana is in great part dependent

upon the interests of Africans in the Diaspora who desire to

immerse themselves in elements of African culture in an effort to

collude their culture with that of Africa’s. In so doing, they

are unwittingly participation in the further psychological

colonization of West Africans.

The first part of this paper will provide a brief background

of the history of food exchange as relates to the continent of

Africa. The second part of the paper will explore the evolution

of the concept of nationhood. The necessary conditions to create

nationalism in Africa will be explored, as well as motivations

behind the impetus toward nationalism both internally and

externally. Post tribal political conditions and the historical

Diasporic influences will be examined. The third part of the

paper will examine the history of the development of national

cuisines in West Africa, specifically Ghana. Additionally, the

way in which national cuisines are promoted, the structure of the

message conveyed, and the target audiences for the consumption of

a national cuisine will be discussed.

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AFRICAN FOOD AND FOOD WAYS

Africa has proven itself particularly skilled at adaptation

with respect to foods and food ways. As methods of

transportation have changed over the millennia (from camels to

ships, trains, and trucks), along with changes in the technology

of food preparation, Africans have historically been “… willing

to try new foods in traditional ways, traditional food in new

ways, or new foods in new ways.”2 Africa contributed coffee,

tamarind, cola, okra, guinea fowl, rooibos, and palm (dende) oil

to the world. From Asia it adopted coconut, banana, plantain,

and Indian spice mixture. After the Atlantic trade was initiated

in the sixteenth century, sub-Saharans borrowed maize, cassava,

pineapple, peanuts (groundnuts), and chili peppers. Thus, trade,

migration from Asian countries such as India, Malaysia, and the

Netherlands, as well as colonial slavery, all contributed to a

rich selection of foods from which Africans could choose. In

post-colonial times, migration of Africans to other countries and

back for school and work has also influenced what people eat.3

2 Gary Hoppenstand and Dennis Hickey, eds. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture: Sub-Saharan Africa (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007), 123.3 Hoppenstand and Hickey, 98.

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All these factors make it almost impossible to identify a typical

continent wide African cuisine. Regional specialties are easier

to isolate. For instance, West Africa is known for its jollof

rice and groundnut stews.

There are some characteristics of African, and specifically

West African cooking that can be generalized. Most meals are one

pot dishes composed of a starch such as yam, cassava, or millet,

eaten with a soup or stew. Protein usually comes from oils,

fish, nuts, and seeds. There are typically no courses and most

people eat at home as restaurants are not as common. This is

changing as the economic system has been shifting from

subsistence, barter, gifts, and hunting and gathering to a cash

economy. This shift is triggering the proliferation of food

stalls at markets, door to door food sales, and roadside

vendors.4

Due to increasing urbanization and the accompanying changes

in lifestyle, West Africans are beginning to see an increase in

related health concerns. Typically, most Africans associate

girth with positive personality characteristics like generosity,

4 Ibid.

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health, and wealth. Skinny people are generally considered

stingy and mean.5 This attitude, along with the custom of eating

until filled, has contributed to food related diseases such as

hypertension and diabetes. With the prevalence of low protein

diets and the replacement of more nutritious indigenous grains

with cash crops such as corn, these new circumstances are

contributing to new challenges for the population.6 These new

health issues are all symptoms of the changes in ecology in

Africa from local selection, to colonization, to globalization

with many nations devoting more than 70% of their cereal acreage

to maize. This is a questionable blessing as it contributes to

monoculture and the accompanying dangers of susceptibility to

disease, the spread of malaria, and the resultant economic

dangers of this type of dependency.7 It is noteworthy that maize

and cassava, more productive than indigenous crops, have been

essential to Africa’s conversion from subsistence farming to

export farming. More scholarship needs to be conducted on the

positive and negative aspects of this particular Atlantic food 5 Igor Cusack, “Pots, pens and ‘eating out the body’: cuisine and the gendering of African nations” Nations and Nationalism 9, no. 2 (2003): 291.6 Hoppenstand, 106.7 James McCann, Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000. (Harvard University Press, 2005), 21.

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exchange. One particular area that requires further study is

that of the impact of maize on the growth of pre-colonial states

like Oye, Benin, and Mali, which is just beginning to be

appreciated.8

The adoption of new foods in Europe had the opposite effect

in that they caused the vertical division in society to become

more acute. Before the Atlantic trade commenced, most Europeans

ate the same thing, regardless of class. Not only did the rich

begin to conspicuously consume new world foods in an effort to

promote their status, the European pursuit of empire caused a

self-conscious development of individual cultures and a feeling

of ‘separateness’ to develop between the different regions.9

This sense of otherness intensified with the advent of the travel

writer beginning in the eighteenth century, who tended to make

value judgments about the advancement of a civilization or lack

thereof based upon what foods were consumed. “Commonly mentioned

in early European accounts from around the continent are sesame,

rice, corn, millet, beans, peas, squash, pumpkins, yams, okra,

8 M.A. Havinden, “The History of Crop Cultivation in West Africa: a Bibliographical Guide.”The Economic History Review 23, no. 3 (1970): 532–555. 9 Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995), 242.

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eggplant, spinach, onions, ….In coastal areas, fishing rather

than hunting or herding provided anima, protein.”10 Due to

subsistence techniques and the effects of draught, flood, or

conflict, travel writers of this time relayed that in some areas

of Africa, food was scarce. This caused them to note that the

gastronomical arts, as perceived by Europeans at this time, were

left by the wayside in deference to filling the stomach.11 These

travel writings have undoubtedly contributed to the perception

that African cuisine was somehow lacking.

Without question, food is intimately connected with identity

and psychological power in that there is a strong cultural

conceptualization of meanings and symbolism surrounding food.

Food and its method of consumption has the capacity to signify an

individual’s political standing in global society. It can signal

ethnicity, race, nationality, class, and also gender. 12

Christian John Reynolds of the University of South Australia

characterizes the power of food into hard power, soft power, and

10 Africa News Service, Inc., The Africa News Cookbook: African Cooking for Western Kitchens.(New York: Viking Penguin, 1985), xii.11 Tannahill, 243. 12 Christian Reynolds, “Tipping the Scales: A New Understanding of Food's Power in the Political Sphere” The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Science 7, no. 5 (2010): 299.

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prestige power. Soft power has the power to change one’s beliefs

and principles. He makes a connection between food and

propaganda in that eating is one of the most private acts that

can be demonstrated publicly.

The act of eating at a restaurant or from a cookbook gives the consumer a greater understanding of the consumed culture… Contemporarily, nations have begun toregard cultural propaganda seriously as a tool to further understanding of their culture and national messages.13

Combined with an ideology, food makes a commanding instrument of

cultural propaganda.

AFRICAN NATIONALISM

What specifically is African nationalism and what are its

implications for the promotion of a strong, unified, modern

state? To what extent does the contemporary preoccupation with

national messages in West Africa connect to the development of a

national cuisine? What are the wider implications of the

development of a national cuisine? In order to answer these

questions effectively, one must turn to definitions of

13 Reynolds, 300.

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nationalism and its evolution out of Europe and its resultant

manifestations into a national cuisine in contemporary West

Africa. South African scholar Anne McClintock, an English,

Gender, and Women's Studies professor is emphatic about the

underpinning for nationalism being that of gender inequality.

Gender inequality, she asserts, is the foundation of male

nationalistic power. In other words, without gender inequality,

we would not have the nation state as it is organized today. She

clearly ties nationalism to European Imperialism and its

construct of the International Family of Man, where the European

race of man is conceptualized as the apex of linear

development.14 Women and others are characterized in the nation

as keepers of the traditional, archaic past and men as thrusting

into the modern future. This “family trope” naturalizes social

inequality so to efficiently justify gender, race, and class

inequalities.

Nationalism is invented, marketed, and consumed in a

fetishistic manner (an irony since fetishistic is how other

‘races’ of man on the family tree are conceptualized via their

14 Anne McClintock, “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family” Feminist Review 44, no. 1 (1993): 64.

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customs and traditions).15 Flags, anthems, sports, and currency,

all technologies of men, are protocols of promoting and ingesting

patriotism. Cuisines serve the same purpose, but are expected to

be maintained by women. As women are associated with childhood

memories, females are charged with guarding the traditional past.

Being outside of traditional power structures, it is permissible

and encouraged that women collect and organize national recipes.

“It might therefore be argued that while women are collating

recipes and looking to the past, men are appropriating the

resulting national cuisine and looking to the future.”16 This has

the consequence of relegating women to the sidelines of the

private sphere when it comes to nation building, bound to the

traditions of the past.

In addition to gender, scholars should also consider the

fundamental epistemological shift in African cultural discourse

that has been caused by the very imposition of constructed gender

categories. Oyeronke Oyewumi writes about this shift in her book

The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse. The

15 McClintock, 62. 16 Igor Cusack, “African Cuisines: Recipes for Nation Building?” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2000): 220.

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authoritative division in Yoruba society, of which Oyewumi is a

part of, is not based on biological determinism, but on age and

seniority. “In no situation in Yoruba society was a male, by

virtue of body type, inherently superior to female.”17

Essentially, the western category of ‘woman’ does not exist

in Yoruba society. Yet, scholars are discussing gender as if

somatocentricity (when phenotype determines social relations) has

always existed in West Africa. This situation is exemplary of

the fundamental western hegemony of knowledge production in

African studies. Whether there are questions that concern

history, gender, or nationalism, the west is the yardstick by

which Africans measure themselves. We know this by virtue of the

perspective of the questions that inform the scholarship, and the

very theories African Studies scholars employ. It is as if an

African version of foundational, universal European things is

being established.18 This is problematic in that it causes

Africans to develop a sort of inferiority complex. “The point is

that Africa is already locked in an embrace with the West; the

17 Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), x11.18 Oyewumi, 19.

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challenge is how to extricate ourselves and how much. It is a

fundamental problem because without this necessary loosening, we

continue to mistake the West for self and therefore we see

ourselves as the Other.”19

The perceived ‘inferiority complex’ West Africans have

inherited betrays itself in the publishing of cookery books

written by Africans. As previously stated, food is used to

delineate identity and acts as a boundary marker. It signifies

who is and is not part of the nation. We know this by the way in

which citizens from different nations are characterized by the

food they eat.20

Food habits are an integral part of cultural behaviour and are often closely identifiedwith particular groups - sometimes in a derogatory or mocking way. So the Frenchare 'Frogs', the German's are 'Krauts', the Italians are 'spaghetti eaters'.... The word'Eskimo' is an Indian word meaning 'eaters of raw flesh', and was originally used toexpress the revulsion of one group toward the food habits of

another.21

19 Oyewumi, 25.20 Catherine Palmer, “From Theory to Practice: Experiencing the Nation inEveryday Life.” Journal of Material Culture, 3 no 2 (1998): 13.21 Palmer, 22.

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For many African nations, nationalism represents the global

‘golden ticket’ to freedom, respect, and prosperity. The

introduction to Dorinda Hafner’s book, A Taste of Africa: Traditional &

Modern African Cooking asserts:

A Taste of Africa is my modest contribution to the continentof my birth and to the stoic, quiet achievers who dailyinstill in the children of Africa the values of Africa’s inherent wealth and a respect for a continent long designated as “primitive”, but which continues to shock and excite.22

Hafner goes on to boast that African cuisine can easily stand

alongside that of Europe and Asia. Her stated objective is to

elevate African cuisine to international status. Mention is made

of the conscious decision to include recipes with global cultural

influences. This is a tacit acceptance of the cultural

syncretism Africa has been undergoing for some time. The very

act of adapting recipes and publishing a book of them with

accompanying converted measurements is an indication of this

syncretism, as cookery in Africa is an oral tradition. This is

representative of African nationalism, which can be characterized

as a “…post tribal, post feudal terminal community which has

22 Hafner, Dorinda, A Taste of Africa: Traditional & Modern African Cooking. (Ten Speed Press, 2002), 1.

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emerged from the shattered forces of disintegration that

characterized modernity.”23

In the evolution from colonialism to post-colonialism and

independence, there exist different groups that promoted, and

continue to promote, nationalism in West Africa. These are

represented first by the Traditional Movement. The Traditional

Movement offered primary resistance to occupation before, during,

and after colonialism. This particular movement could be

characterized as ‘nativist’ as it drew upon magico-religious

sentiments. In contrast to Traditional Movements, Syncretistic

Movements emerged during the colonial era and could be composed

of tribal associations who desire a rule that is a blend of both

tribal and western institutions. Kinship organizations are part

of this Syncretistic group. They served to connect expatriates

abroad with home and to transmit Western values, such as

nationalism. The third group to promote a nationalist agenda is

the Modernist Movement. This movement is composed of Western

educated elites who desire to improve their own socioeconomic

status. The Pan African movements fall under the Modernist

23 James Smoot Coleman and Richard L. Sklar, Nationalism and Development in Africa : Selected Essays (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994), 23.

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Movement umbrella, and are most relevant to the creation of

national cuisines in West Africa. Pan African movements are

usually led by members of the African Diaspora in cooperation

with African western educated elites. Their overarching agenda

is a global unity and the promotion of the advancement of members

of the African race.24

All these variations of nationalistic movements can truly be

reduced to a long, drawn out adjustment to the challenges of

modernity that colonization, and later independence, posed.

This included a changeover from subsistence to a cash economy.

Other aspects of the transition include wage labor, urbanization,

Christian evangelization, and constructed colonial boundaries. A

common colonial administration with the accompanying

administrative, legislative, and political institutions is

typical of Anglophone colonies. In keeping with the Anglophone

approach to the administration of indirect rule, westernized,

male elite staffed many of the institutions but were excluded

from the benefits and privileges of citizenship. This lack of

opportunity was bound to create psychological resentment.25 This

24 Coleman and Sklar, 21-22. 25 Coleman and Sklar, 26.

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combination of factors, the imposition of a racist, gendered

concept of nationalism, feelings of inferiority with respect to

food and identity, and Pan African influences, served to

undermine traditional systems and to create conditions that would

allow the rise of nationalistic fervor. One of the ways this

sentiment manifests itself is in the formation of a national

gastronomy.

INFLUENCE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL

CUISINES IN WEST AFRICA

Anglophone colonies were the ones best poised to take on a

nationalistic agenda in the years following World War II.

Relative to Lusophone and Francophone colonial administration,

Britain was a liberal colonial power. Self-government was a goal

of the system of colonial management. In addition to a

constitutional framework, territorial individuality was

emphasized via currency and other markers such as decentralized

rule and budgetary autonomy.26 Along with those westernized

elites who stood to gain the most from the creation of the

26 Coleman and Sklar, 29.

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nation, African Americans have historically helped the drive to

independence and nationhood. Since the early eighteenth century,

African American missionaries took an important role in

witnessing the effects of colonial rule and spreading their ideas

about democracy and independence. Likewise the role of militant

African colonialism engendered by Garveyism in the 1920’s has

been minimized.

Another major cultural influence on the development of

nationalism in Africa was the American Colonization Society (ACS)

formed in 1817 to send free African-Americans to Africa. In 1822,

the society established on the west coast of Africa a colony that

in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia.27 Founders

believed black American colonists could play a central role in

Christianizing and civilizing Africa. By 1867, the society had

sent more than 13,000 emigrants.28 During its later years the

society focused on educational and missionary efforts in Liberia

rather than emigration.

27 The Library of Congress, “The African-American Mosaic,” A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture, http://www.loc.gov.ezproxy.gsu.edu/exhibits/african/afam002.html.28 The Library of Congress, “The African-American Mosaic”.

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The global anti-imperialism that followed World War II as

manifested in European Nationalistic movements, gave the desire

for nation building some basis in support. The Atlantic Charter

can be included as one of the central pieces in the Allies war

against autocracy that contributed to this wave of European

independence movements. This policy’s role was to set the Allied

goals for the postwar world. Among others, some of the goals

listed in the Charter included the following: no territorial

aggrandizement; restoration of self-government to those deprived

of it; global cooperation to secure better economic and social

conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; and abandonment

of the use of force.

The Four Freedoms, as articulated by US President Franklin

D. Roosevelt in the 1941 State of the Union address, was a

proposal to promote four fundamental freedoms that people

"everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy. These included the

freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom

from want, and freedom from fear. Wilson also endorsed the right

to economic security and an internationalist view of foreign

policy. These policies undoubtedly made an impression on the

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African exchange students being educated in African American

institutions in the years since 1945. While there, these

students absorbed many of the values of their African American

colleagues. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president is one of the

most well-known examples of this intellectual and values

exchange.

How does all this talk of African Nationalism relate to the

development of a nationwide cuisine for independent African

states? Especially during the economic troubles of the 1970’s

and 1980’s, when modernization via industrial technology was no

longer an option, elites turned to the past and tradition to

fashion a united domestic culture.29 Continuations of

gastronomic imperialism in Africa, cookbooks reflect the cuisine

of a new nation and are an important part of the ‘civilizing

process’. This trend occurred at a moment in history when

Africans were searching for some sort of autonomy and validity in

the world system they found themselves a part of. Cuisines are

constructed and seek to create and/or imply a particular post-

tribal, post-colonial reality that is polyglot in nature,

29 Cusack, “Pots, pens, and Eating Out the Body”, 278.

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becoming free of its former associations with taboo and primitive

meanings.30 As in the post-industrial, post-colonial India of

Arjun Appadurai’s description in “How to Make a National

Cuisine”, the propagators are a highly mobile class of

professionals with westernized tastes, which are creating a new

consumption style, and a new ideology of multiethnic reality for

the nation, notwithstanding ethnic boundaries.31 Dorinda

Hafner is an example of this class of professionals. An African

born cookbook author and Ghanaian television chef, she produces

cookbooks for this same audience.

There are consequences to this type of cultural promotion

and production. Compromises have to be made as regards

traditional food production and consumption patterns, which may

be lost. European ideas of menu and courses form the backdrop of

cookbook production. At times, as Osseo-Ansare comments on her

Betumi blog, these cookbooks are artifacts that reveal modalities

of identity, ideology, and culture in the making.

In 1993, Ten Speed Press published a cookbook by Ghanaian author and television cooking show host Dorinda Hafner that became a bestseller, A Taste of Africa.

30 Arjun, 531 Arjun, 6.

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… I recently picked up a copy of the revised edition, only to discover that it has quite a different feel. For one thing, the language has been toned down: "fufu"has been renamed "dumplings," "momone" has gone from "smelly" salted fish to simply "salted fish." Also, … she has reversed the names, for example, from using Ghanaian names ("shitor din" or "kontomire ne momone," "kubecake," "Tom Brown") in favor of highlighting more understandable English names as headings…. Understandable, perhaps, but also a kind of loss. One wonders at Hafner’s motivation for ‘toning down’ her language to make it more palatable to an English reading audience. 32

In as much as these cookbooks are evidence of a budding

hybrid culture, they are also clear products of dominant

ideologies such as capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism.

Contemporary West African cuisine would have been built upon pre-

colonial, colonial, and globalizing exchanges. African

independence movements have stimulated a renaissance of

literature in response to a renewed appreciation and interest in

African culture. African Americans in particular generate

awareness in, produce, and consume information about African

culture, particularly easily accessible cuisine. One of the

most important exchanges is the one by which African elites, and

32 Betumi Blog, “On my African Cookbook shelf,” Betumi Blog, http://www.betumiblog.blogspot.com/ (accessed December 1, 2012).

22

African American tourists travel to major cities around the world

such as New York, Paris and London and dine at African

restaurants where the ‘national cuisine’ is neatly

compartmentalized in a European style menu.

Any member of an African diaspora returning home to oneof these countries having spent some time in Harlem, orin London, or Paris, will be very much aware that African countries are supposed to have their own cuisine and may have had their own cuisine redefined by these restaurants in foreign lands.33

Irrespective of the fact that there are more than a quarter

of a million African professionals living outside Africa, the

main driving force for the creation of national cuisines in West

Africa comes from the Pan African movement propagated by African

Americans and westernized elites. There is a pattern of

conflation that occurs where the identities of African and

African Americans, although sharing some characteristics, seem to

meld into a single identity. What is occurring is that members

of the Diaspora have begun treating two distinct concepts as if

they were one, which produces errors and misunderstandings, as a

33 Cusack, “African Cuisines,” p. 212.

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fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of

relationships which are emphasized by contrasts.

In Anglophone West Africa, several cookery books have now

been published, making it possible to conduct an analytical

comparison of who produces the books, and for what audience.

Most especially, Ghana, as the first colony to declare

independence, has a large enough selection to allow for

meaningful discussion. Fran Osseo-Ansare has conducted such a

study whereby she uses a matrix to determine who published

cookery books and who the intended audiences are. Her

examination of the history of Ghanaian cookbooks looks at

cookbooks during the last half of the twentieth century, and

categorizes the books into three periods:

early independence mid 1950’s to mid-1970’s

the stress years (military coups) late 1970’s to 1980’s

contemporary 1990’s to 2000.

Her typology of authors includes the following: Ghanaians for

Ghanaians, of which there are five, Ghanaians for Non Ghanaians,

of which there are also five, by Non Ghanaians for Non Ghanaians,

of which there are nine, and by Non Ghanaians for Ghanaians, of

24

which there are four. She has concluded that almost every book

written was produced with the intention of dispelling myths and

fighting the prevalent Western bias of Sub-Saharan cuisine as

“second class”.34 One can also discern a pattern of interest

based upon the attention of U.S. publishing houses, which peaked

immediately following independence, resurging in the late 1990’s

and published under categories such as “soul food” or “African

Diaspora”. This publishing practice exemplifies cultural

conflation and drives home the reality that pursuit of African

national cuisines is determined by the Diaspora (specifically

African Americans), and nourished by western educated elites from

West Africa.

What is problematic about these external conceptions with

regard to nation building? It is the adoption of units of

reference from the United States and Europe that are in truth

intended for the world of the Diasporic tourist with all its

attended stereotypes.35 Although Houston is a student of South

34 Betumi, “Beyond Gumbo: A History of Ghanaian Cookbooks,” Betumi, http://www.betumi.com/home/gumbo-fulltext.html (accessed December 1, 2012).35 Lynn Houston. “Serpents Teeth in the Kitchen of Meaning: A Theory of South African Culinary Historiography”, The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies, July: 1-7. http://www.safundi.com.

25

African national cuisine, her observations are valid for West

Africa as well.

This vision of a South African culture unified on the level of the kitchen does not account for the divisionsbequeathed by the history. It takes account neither ofthe racial violence which marked of its influence on all the social aspects of the nation, nor of the dynamic of the contemporary South African Policy.36

As Houston so skillfully demonstrates, cuisine is a way of

simultaneously looking to ancestral traditions while at the same

time revealing current political claims. She raises some

relevant questions about how these culinary constructions

influence the perception of West Africans about themselves, and

at what point does the imposition and adoption of western

cultural parameters and food ways constitute an act of violence

to native cultural practices and social interactions?

The commonplace nationalism that a cuisine represents has

been appropriated by the elites in Africa. This is typified by

the promotion of cuisines on national websites. When trying to

ascertain what elites believe to be essential elements of a

36 Houston, “Serpents Teeth in the Kitchen of Meaning”.

26

national culture, these websites are a good place to survey.37

It remains to be seen to what degree this appropriation and

promotion will make social changes with respect to gender and

identity in each individual nation. In this way, imperialism is

made to be ever present in West Africa, not just in its adoption

of the concept of national cuisine, meal structures, and the role

of gender, but in the cheap and/or poor quality European imported

staple goods that have replaced African staples in the recipes

themselves. The utilization of these foods incorporates a banal,

undetected nationalism that is constructed with foods not native

to their locales and with foreign concepts, reinforcing an

enduring psychological imperialism for generations to come.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Africa News Service, Inc. The Africa News Cookbook: African Cooking for Western Kitchens. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985), xii.

Betumi Blog, “On my African Cookbook shelf,” Betumi Blog, http://www.betumiblog.blogspot.com/ (accessed December 1, 2012).

37 Cusack, “Pots, pens, and ‘eating out of the body’”, 281.

27

Cusack, Igor. “African Cuisines: Recipes for Nation Building?” Journal ofAfrican Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2000): 220.

Cusack, Igor. “Pots, pens and ‘eating out the body’: cuisine and the gendering of African nations” Nations and Nationalism 9, no. 2 (2003): 291.

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