New brief lists 100 forgotten but promising African foods

AFRICA is paradoxically reliant on imported food and home to a disproportionate share of the world’s hungry while at the same time boasts the potential to be a global breadbasket and food superpower.

Part of realizing that potential depends on tapping the continent’s vast array of food crops, which too often have been pushed off stage by global commodity foods produced elsewhere.

These include traditional local mainstays such as Bambara groundnut and pigeons peas, superfoods such as fonio or baobab fruit, and naturalized vitamin-rich crops such as amaranth or taro.

The new Compendium of forgotten foods in Africa aims to move the needle by identifying so-called orphan foods that very often are “locally adapted and less fastidious than exotic cultivars,” such as maize, rice or wheat.

Produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the compendium presents 100 examples of neglected local foods that have the potential to sustainably provide the much-needed dietary nutrients to various communities across Africa.

The compendium is a scoping study and a first step in what will be “an exhaustive identification and characterization of forgotten foods in Africa,” said Abebe Haile-Gabriel, assistant director-general and regional representative for Africa, and FARA executive director Aggrey Agumya.

Both leaders made it clear that while the current list may be expanded over time, the key litmus test is to generate increased attention and funding by researchers and agricultural development practitioners able to shepherd pioneering investments into sustainable agri-food transformation.