Culinary Traditions and Heritage Foods in Africa

Heritage cuisines and culinary traditions have become an important part of the tourism product of many regions. In fact, food tourism is now one of the most popular forms of niche tourism. Millions of people travel each year to taste local cuisines, experience subtle regional culinary traditions, learn to cook traditional dishes, and enjoy a local eating ambience. Most countries have their own national cuisines that help create a national or regional identity. Food, especially traditional fare and national dishes, are extremely important crucibles for heritage identity and knowledge. Their ingredients illustrate a history of poverty and wealth, migration, colonialism, farming practices, hunting and gathering traditions, religion and faith, humankind’s struggles with nature, and environmental determinism. In addition to being markers of regional identity, traditional foods are an important part of the tourism experience and a salient element of a destination’s hospitality services. Although Chinese, Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, and Mexican food tend to dominate the world’s international foodscapes, Sub-Saharan Africa has provided a number of gastronomic traditions that appeal to tourists and that have become part of the foodscapes abroad. Examples include Ghanaian peanut butter soup, Ethiopian injera (sour flatbread), West African jollof rice, South African barbequed meats, Mozambique’s piri piri chicken, and Kenyan irio. This chapter examines the role of food and culinary traditions as an important cultural tourism product in Sub-Saharan Africa.