Staple Foods

North, East, West, and South: Our tastes are vast but the staples are the same.

The base of most African meals is a flour (from ground cereals, yam or cassava root) boiled with water. It is called fufu (Western Africa), ugali (Kenya and Tanzania), posho (Uganda), sadza (Zimbabwe), or nsima (Malawi and Zambia), pap (South Africa), luku, moteke, bugari and ghaat.

Rice is another big staple either eaten plain or jazzed up with tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, and spices to make the popular jallof rice eaten in West Africa.

Bread is also a staple.  In Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen and some parts of Sudan, most dishes are eaten with injera (also called laxoox and canjeero), a bread made out of teff flour.