A Taste of Change: Exploring New African Cuisines That Focus on Traditional Ingredients and Culture with Selassie Atadika

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. We are African and eat food that makes sense to us, food that speaks to our culture, to our community, to our economy, to our environment in 2050. Stay tuned as we bring you inspiring people who are unlocking Africa's economic potential.

[00:00:47] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast with your host Terser Adamu. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find inspirational people who are doing inspirational things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today we have a special guest, Chef Selassie Atadika, who is an award-winning chef, educator

[00:01:14] and food systems advocate, founder and executive chef at Meduno, a company that celebrates and preserves Africa's rich culinary heritage. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast Selassie, how are you? I'm well thank you, it's a pleasure being on the show.

[00:01:33] It's a pleasure having you on the show and I know you're pretty busy so I'm thankful to have the opportunity to have a conversation with you today. Thank you. I usually like to start from the beginning so I was hoping you could please introduce

[00:01:46] yourself and tell us a bit more about Chef Selassie Atadika. Yeah, let's see, I'm born in Ghana and my family left in the early 80s when we had our political instability. I ended up growing up mostly in the US and food was probably the biggest way that we

[00:02:07] maintained our culture while we were living here. So my mom would cook a lot of Ghanaian dishes and I think we probably ate out twice a year on her birthday and Mother's Day, other than that we ate at home and it was just delicious.

[00:02:23] As I started going to school and then later on working internationally, Ghanaian food was something that made me feel at home and at the same time I was curious about how other people looked at food and what their traditions were around food.

[00:02:37] So I started just kind of, you know, just tasting my way around whether it was the continent or you know in other places just to understand how people were linking themselves to food. So when I went to school as the child, actually first child of immigrant

[00:02:54] family in the US, I really had three choices which was lawyer, doctor and engineer. I loved science. So growing up actually I wanted to be a doctor and from high school I was in the lab making anesthesia.

[00:03:09] I was making aspirin and I was just having a lot of fun and doing E. coli research on the weekend and at the medical school that was nearby for cancer. So that's kind of how I grew up.

[00:03:21] But food was always something, you know, from elementary school I was baking bread on weekends to make sure my parents had something to take with them to the office. When I went to university I used to cook and I particularly loved

[00:03:33] baking because that was what my mom didn't do. So in terms of like seeing the family situation, I was like, OK, she's doing the Ghanaian dishes and I'm going to add value by baking and doing something she wasn't doing.

[00:03:45] So food and cooking became sort of like my happy place. Yeah, I didn't really think about it as a career until much, much later. And I think I'm an accidental chef. But the journey has kind of brought everything together starting off with

[00:04:04] math and science, which is kind of the foundation of cooking, right? Yes. And then adding in a lot of the work that I was doing environmental studies and geography where my focus is in university. And then my second degree is in international affairs.

[00:04:19] So like kind of traveling around the continent and seeing all these issues around development and humanitarian issues. Food just kept bringing people together and food just became something that I saw as one of the big ways in which we could solve so many

[00:04:34] different problems from nutrition to health to economic crises and sort of just kickstarting economies. Fantastic. So you shared your personal journey in terms of food was one of the biggest ways that you preserved your Ghanaian heritage when moving to the state and also your love of science.

[00:04:56] So when did the journey or the transition into becoming a chef begin? And what was that journey like? It happened by accident, probably. So food has always, like I said, been part of what I do.

[00:05:08] And at the time when I started taking food more seriously, I was living in Senegal and being a Francophone country, there's just a lot of restaurants and dining experiences that I got to see.

[00:05:21] But at the same time, at the time I was working for the UN and I realized, you know, we end up shopping in at the time it was this French grocery store. And I was like, why are we paying all this money for imported food

[00:05:34] when we should be eating more of what is available in Senegal? So I put together a group of friends and colleagues who also love food. And I was like, OK, let's just get together once a month

[00:05:44] and let's just make a list of what's seasonal and let's all just bring something so that it's kind of like a potluck idea. But let's just all use these kind of ingredients and see what shows up. We started doing it and I tend to be a little competitive.

[00:05:57] So I was like, well, why don't we just also score, you know, like, let's just see which was the best dish. And so we ended up doing it. There's a group of about maybe 20 people that were showing up on a monthly basis.

[00:06:08] And three of us were kind of obsessed with it and would spend hours preparing and thinking about the dish and what was in season and how we could come up with something just used as many of these

[00:06:19] ingredients as possible and eventually sort of like everybody else kind of got tired and they were like, well, you guys keep winning, you know? And so I around that time, my brother was getting married.

[00:06:30] I was going to come to the US for the wedding and my plan was to spend a month on leave and I was like, wow, I've never taken a month off. So how am I going to do this?

[00:06:39] So the culinary institute of America was nearby and so I decided to do a boot camp. And so it was a one week program just immersed at the university or the yeah, at the school and it was for sort of amateurs,

[00:06:53] like people who just love like a fish or not as people who love cooking at home. So there was no pressure. And that's when I found out that they have sort of adult learning and executive learning programs that are available.

[00:07:05] So I got my two friends that were super into cooking to join. We did the one month program about a year later. And when we finished, we're like, we can't just forget about this. Like while we're actually all of us were still working in humanitarian

[00:07:20] and development work, you know, while we're still doing our normal day jobs, let's start doing this dinner maybe once a month and bring friends together come up with some fun menu to just keep our skills alive. So we ran that for about three years and then

[00:07:34] the menus were always a collaboration of the three of us. And I just thought really strongly about the local ingredients. And so I pushed to have one dinner where I kind of did a menu around the African continent and these ingredients.

[00:07:47] And that was the beginning, I think at the end of the menu, it was written in French because we were in Senegal. I wanted to say something very, you know, sort of at the end of the menu. And I didn't want to say bon appetit

[00:07:59] because I did a little write up explaining why I was offering the different dishes. And I just said, Vam ni dinu. And after I wrote that, I was like, OK, this is going to turn into something else,

[00:08:10] which now is ni dinu as a concept in what I'm doing in Ghana. Me dinu is it's actually Vam ni dinu, which is edda for come let's eat. It's sort of the invitation asking others to join you to eat. Yes. And so I just felt that, you know,

[00:08:26] why should we say bon appetit? Like we have it in our own various languages and I'm going to say it in my language and share my culture through that. And so that's that was kind of the beginning of the journey.

[00:08:35] You know, after running the concept once a month with my friends for three years, I sort of decided it was time to move out on my own. And that's when I moved back to Ghana and that was in 2014. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:08:51] You mentioned living in Senegal was a catalyst to becoming a chef. So from living in the US to Senegal, was he a specific purpose or a reason that inspired you to return to Ghana? Did you have a specific focus in mind?

[00:09:08] I think it's been a bit of an evolution. And as the oldest, my family when we moved here was sort of the five of us, my parents and myself and my two siblings. But I knew that we came from more.

[00:09:19] And so, you know, having Thanksgiving, just the five of us, I kept saying to myself that I really want to be that person that reconnects our American five with the rest of our relatives at home. Because I just felt that that was something that I could do.

[00:09:33] I was curious about it. Food was something that moved me and I knew that I wanted to know more about Ghana and the way we eat. And along the journey, I also got to see how little people knew about African cuisines. Yes.

[00:09:48] I had colleagues from the UN that were like, oh, you know, the food here in this country is not great. It's crap. And I was like, actually, the food here is really good. I think maybe you don't understand the food here or you don't know

[00:10:00] how to appreciate it or you don't really understand it. But also I was doing humanitarian work. So you are in a place at a moment in time, which is not when the country is at its best. Right.

[00:10:11] And I think for me, it's almost like I'm a bit of I tend to be historical in my perspective. And so I'm the kind of person that I can go into an old city, whether it's a UNESCO heritage site or places like that.

[00:10:25] And I can see the beauty in the present, but also I can understand the history behind a lot of those buildings and why things are the way they are in Ghana. We have these symbols called adencar symbols. And there's one called Sangopa, which is sort of a

[00:10:41] it's an image of a bird that's facing forward, but it has its neck turned back and it's got this golden egg in its mouth. And really the little translation of that symbol is go back and get it. And it's always played a big part in my life.

[00:10:56] And I always feel that there's so much for us to learn from our history. And when we understand that, we can take that information and move it forward. So moving back to Ghana was something that I didn't know when exactly it was going to happen in my life,

[00:11:09] but I had known that it was going to happen for a long time. So you mentioned something, Kida, in terms of using the past to shape the future. A lot of the cuisines that you make are traditionally Ghanaian or African,

[00:11:23] but they do have a modern or new twist. I think I've seen it described as new African cuisine. Could you elaborate on that concept in terms of new African cuisine and how it guides your creations? Yeah. New African cuisine is a term that I sort of coined

[00:11:42] when I moved back to Ghana in 2014 to encapsulate what I was trying to do. It wasn't contemporary African cuisine. It was for me, it wasn't about the food being smaller portions. It wasn't about the food being pretty.

[00:11:58] For me, it was really how do we get culture, community and cuisine to intersect with environment, sustainability and economy? Because that was what I was trying to do. I was trying to make sure that our culture is being showcased

[00:12:13] in the cuisine that we're presenting, but it's also bringing together the community, the community that grew and produced the food, but the community that's also consuming the food. It's also making sure that we respect the environment because I think the beginning of society is culture.

[00:12:29] I mean, it's agriculture. We settled when we were able to produce food and not have to be hunters and gatherers. And so when you see all cuisines all over the world, it comes from having food in a way that it grows where you are.

[00:12:42] So when we start with cuisines being something that the foundation of it is your environment, you need to actually eat what grows where you are. That's how you start to respect the system and respect the process. When you see cuisine at sort of village level or community level,

[00:12:59] what you see is, OK, I'm going to grow this and you are growing that. Let's trade that. Or I have this peel that's going to be coming off of this plantain banana yam. We can give it to the goats to eat or we can give.

[00:13:12] So there's a circularity that works with food. And that's when you start seeing the sustainable elements that are coming through. You start understanding that, well, OK, rice was a special occasion for you. It wasn't just you off because it was not party

[00:13:27] you off because it's party you off. It became party you off because it takes a lot of work to harvest rice and it's also very expensive. And that understanding of it made it something that you did for special occasions.

[00:13:39] It's not something you eat three times a day like it is now. Rice was very expensive. And so when you served it, it was it was something that was unique. And now when you see the global system in the I think

[00:13:53] was at the late 70s, early 80s, when Ghana ended up having to restructure our debt after various events, we had to open up to the world market. So all of a sudden, cheap rice from the US that had been subsidized

[00:14:05] to like I think 70 or 71 percent of it was being subsidized. So the farmers are actually only incurring 21 percent of the cost. They had a surplus and they needed to dump it somewhere. So all of a sudden American rice gets dumped in Ghana

[00:14:17] and they have market spend and so they're pushing this product. So all of a sudden you see check rice and rice becoming a daily occurrence and a fast food that we have. And so when you start seeing that, you ask, why are we eating so much rice?

[00:14:30] And you follow the story and it comes back to economics. So for me, when I think about food, it's like, how do we present a food or a cuisine or how do we focus on dishes that allow us as a nation

[00:14:42] to move forward in a way that makes sense or as a community to make sense? I mean, there's a funny story that maybe I'll share when I moved back to Ghana, I was talking to a few friends and they understood what I was doing.

[00:14:54] And so one of them was pulling together a panel discussion on the arts and how the arts conform the foundation of nation building. So basically how our arts and culture part of nation building. And he invited me. And, you know, there was myself, there was a photographer,

[00:15:11] there was an artist who is he does a lot of satirical cartoons. And, you know, everyone's kind of like, what's this cook doing on the stage? She's a caterer. What's going on? Because like in Ghana, like, you know, women that are in the food business

[00:15:25] are generally called caterers or cooks, you know. So someone from the back of the room raises their hand and is like, hey, you know, like you're calling yourself a chef. What's the difference between a chef and a cook or like a chef and a caterer?

[00:15:37] I just want to understand. And someone in the back of the room before I get a chance to heckle, he was like chefs are people who cook for people who are not hungry. And for me, that was really something that took,

[00:15:50] you know, in many ways my approach to cooking is how do we make sure we as Ghanians or we as Africans can eat food that makes sense to us in 2050? Food that speaks to our culture, to our community, to our economy, to our environment in 2050.

[00:16:07] Because if we're not careful, it's going to get wiped out. If we don't pay attention, it's not going to, you know, exist. But the idea is not to continue in the same way. I think everybody in life, most people in life anyway, want to be aspirational.

[00:16:22] So food evolves, language evolves, culture evolves. Food has to evolve, but it needs to evolve in a way that allows us to, I believe, hold on to some of our history and culture and to allow us to tell our story, to allow us to be who we are

[00:16:38] and to empower communities. So if we look at, you know, rural communities, how do we keep rural communities alive? It's by eating food that they grow. You know, it's by making sure that food is still relevant. It's not saying we're eating French fries.

[00:16:52] It's saying that we're going to what are we going to do with the app? What are we doing with Cassava? So you touched on some important economic factors and challenges. So within your work, how do you balance the intersection of culture, community and cuisine

[00:17:06] with some of the economic factors that you just discussed? It's challenging because the system is already broken. What I mean by that is fundamentally if you want to use local, you would think that would actually be cheaper. But using local oftentimes is more expensive.

[00:17:25] In Ghana, the price of local chicken is twice as expensive as imported chicken. And if you look into it, I think about, I forget what percent, but more than 50 percent of the price for local chicken comes from the feed because it's being imported.

[00:17:42] But also the subsidies on the farmers growing the poultry outside of Ghana or the continent is different. But we also need to be aware of some of the other reasons why these products are being dumped because sometimes they're not up to a certain standard

[00:17:57] or they've passed the shelf life and they're being dumped into our markets. But it's hard to balance it in a way that is economic, but it makes sense when you look at the whole picture. My dining experiences are dining experiences for the upper middle class.

[00:18:12] It's catered to the upper middle class for several different reasons. Number one, the time and energy and work that goes into producing the dishes. Some of the dishes that we produce require a lot of time just to produce them

[00:18:23] and skill. So there's a lot of training that happens. But the ingredients, if they are local, are more expensive than buying the imported chicken. So we will buy local chicken. We will talk to farmers in Brongahapa region to bring in cashew apples

[00:18:38] because we want to make sure that we are bringing in an ingredient that is currently being wasted. But the road transportation in that case might cost more than the actual cashew apple. So our dining experiences are meant for the upper middle class

[00:18:52] because of the actual cost of it, but also because it is when you translate it, it ends up being something that only a certain group of people can afford. But I think they are part of the taste makers

[00:19:04] that can create the momentum to bring it back into fashion. So in Ghana, we're late adopters and usually we need to see that something has moved forward before we'll buy into it. So for me, the philosophy is really if we can get more middle upper class people

[00:19:21] ready to pay a bit more to put their values in their food and to pay for their values that they believe should be in their food. That allows there to be a larger economy, let's call it demand, but also allows policymakers to see it.

[00:19:36] And they also are part of the group of policymakers to understand where we should be going. Then there's the need for education to allow this to move forward so that slowly the lower middle class can also get on board.

[00:19:52] So, for example, if you are in a rural area, you do have access to what you're growing in your own garden. So you can make those choices. But all of a sudden, because we are making, I don't know,

[00:20:02] phonio and millet sexy, you're going to want to consume that instead of rice, hopefully, or that you now see that there's a pride and value in eating the millet rather than thinking, oh, it's for poor people

[00:20:15] or it's something that we eat in the lean season or that it's, you know, we want to go for that pizza. So there's a circularity of you need a certain group to have the demand and want the product and then you then can start to create the momentum.

[00:20:31] I'll give you an example and I'm going to use millet as an example. So millet right now is kind of not that cool. When I came back, I was like, OK, so why is millet not being consumed?

[00:20:43] I decided that I was going to start using it as much as possible to showcase it so that a lot of my clients would now be interested in millet. And so what and got some millets and we couldn't find it in the grocery store.

[00:20:55] We had to go to the local market, Nima market, which is the market in a crowd where we get a lot of northern ingredients. We bought it. I went through the recipe plan with my team and they brought me back this dish.

[00:21:08] It was beautiful and I was really excited. It was whole millet, so it was cooked whole and then almost like a cold millet salad with seasonal mangoes. We had tomato, we had fresh herbs, a bit of citrus in there.

[00:21:21] So it was kind of like, you know, a cold salad, but using millet. And I took the first bite and I get into a bunch of. Well, I just heard a lot of crunching that was not food. And I was like, OK, but what's going on?

[00:21:34] Took a second bite, more crunching. And I realized there were a lot of stones in the food. And so I went back to my team and I said, hey, did you clean it? Did you wash it out?

[00:21:43] They're like, yeah, we laid it out, picked out as many of the stones as we could, but it looks like there are some really small ones that are in here. So that's when I had my first aha moment.

[00:21:52] It's like, OK, so if you want people to use millet, we need to have access to higher quality millet similar to the rice. How do we have rice without stones in it? You know, we're processing rice better now, but millet is not being processed as well.

[00:22:05] Then you realize that, OK, so in order for them to process it more, they need equipment, but they're currently thrashing it on the ground because they realize that kind of it's only used by a certain part of the population which has less money.

[00:22:17] So they're not going to pay top dollar for it. And it's not even going to go in a grocery store. So there's no point for them to add value to this process. So they stop trying to mechanize it and they stick with what they know.

[00:22:29] And then the consumers are like, OK, well, if I'm going to buy a millet with stones in it, that's going to not be cool. So I'm not going to do that. If I had to take all the stones out, I don't have an extra 30 minutes

[00:22:38] to process the millet at home. I'm just going to buy a bag of rice and keep moving. Yes. So we need to sort of see that if we were able to create, you know, a demand and the demand sometimes is not just consumer to consumer.

[00:22:55] It might need to be higher level consumers, you know, school feeding programs, hospitals, universities, police, military, like large consumers of these ingredients. If the government said, hey, we're doing our millet plan in the next five years, we are looking to buy x tons of millets

[00:23:13] to put into these places and spaces, people would grow it. You know, so we need to actually decide what is how do we design the food that we want? How do we design the future of our food system in Ghana or Nigeria

[00:23:28] or in other spaces in the continent? How do we actively do it? Because right now I honestly can't tell you who is deciding what we eat because you've got the high level food companies that are doing processed food that have market spend.

[00:23:42] You've got companies that are doing fertilizers and other inputs that are coming into the space. You've got companies that are just trying to make money in Africa because their ingredients or products are no longer acceptable as healthy in other markets. So they're dumping.

[00:23:56] So there's, you know, all these different things that are happening. And then the average, you know, Ghana is moved by price. So they're looking for what's cheaper and what's convenient, right? So it ends up being a mix that we are not in control of.

[00:24:12] But I see it as something that if we put some more time and energy into, we could design. Fantastic. So you mentioned about creating the demand, but what has been the challenge of forming relationships with farmers or suppliers to support or strengthen

[00:24:29] the quality and quantity of the products that you are sourcing? I think one of the biggest challenges is that we don't have connections with our farmers. So, you know, I spent quite a bit of time growing up in the US and we have farmers markets.

[00:24:44] And there's this conversation like you actually know who they are and it's gotten better over the last few years. But our structure in Ghana is market queens. So the person you interact with is a market queen. And one of the biggest lessons I learned

[00:24:59] is understanding how that system works. So I'll give you an example. The market queens are connecting with the farmers and the aggregators. They are going to the site where the farmers are. They are then figuring out the price, right? Negotiating that price.

[00:25:16] And then they're working through the transportation and the logistics to get it to the market. So there are times I've heard where the best tomatoes come from the northern part of Ghana. It has to do with the sunlight and the temperature and the climate.

[00:25:31] I've heard that, you know, if it's peak season, you know, people are not going to let those trucks move. People are going to just let that sit because if you flood the market with tomatoes right now, the price is going to go down.

[00:25:41] So let's hold back some of those tomatoes, right? So not having a relationship with farmers and the farmers not having capacity to process for female farmers to not have access to land. I mean, you know, there's a lot that has to do

[00:25:55] with the farming side of things and the communication. Then for me, what I'm doing now is I'm looking for ingredients that other people are not. And that's when we can maybe talk about cash crops. So the introduction of cash crops, I believe,

[00:26:09] has very much led to the destination of our indigenous food system. So if you were growing X, Y and Z, and someone has told you, well, stop growing that I'm going to give you money for mangoes and pineapples and cocoa to you. That's what you're growing.

[00:26:25] And so when I'm talking to somebody, I'm like, I'm looking for Domo mushrooms. They're like, well, Domo mushrooms are only available. Like you will not find Domo mushrooms in a crop because there is no value chain for it.

[00:26:37] The value chains that we have are set up for for cash crops. And so we are in need of building a new infrastructure for our own ingredients that are ingredients. For example, when I do my dinners, I'm trying to bring ingredients to the plate

[00:26:55] that people haven't seen in a while. Sometimes their ingredients that they haven't had since they were children. Some of the ingredients are not even that exotic. So I'm talking about like I was doing a dish once with guava. And when guava comes into season, it's a short season,

[00:27:10] but it's not something that you find readily available because most people are focused on the ingredients that are going to bring them fast money and that are being exported. So what you're realizing now is ingredients like like guava, like soursop, you won't find them

[00:27:27] because when people used to eat them, it was in their backyard. And so people are building apartment buildings now. And so a lot of or they're using the land or cutting it up into smaller plots. And so you're losing out on the family garden.

[00:27:41] So you're not seeing that farmers are eating the guava. But since there's no export for guava, you're not going to see it. And I'm using guava because I think it's a pretty one with the standard ingredient

[00:27:52] that one should find, but they're much more exotic and lesser known ingredients. And so it takes me a long time to actually find who has it because they're not advertising it. It's not something that you will see because there is no value chain for it.

[00:28:05] There's a value chain and you don't have a lot of interlocutors to deal with with those ingredients. Yes, so you detailed the challenges of cash crops and also the export challenges for less known ingredients such as guava.

[00:28:19] As part of Midunu, you have Midunu chocolates, which is exported globally. What has been a journey or some of the I don't like to say challenges, but what have you had to kind of go through in order to add value

[00:28:34] to finished products such as chocolate to be export ready? Yeah, so I started with chocolates again. Another accident. Our meals were focused on lesser known ingredients that were seen as sort of every day. And so when it came to cocoa, you know, Ghana is known for its cocoa,

[00:28:53] but we weren't really processing it into anything. So at the end of the meals, we were offering these chocolate bonbons or truffles and people started saying, hey, can we get them outside of these dining experiences?

[00:29:02] Can we just buy the box at home or can you have it shipped to us or brought to us? So we started offering the chocolates about a year in in Ghana for people to purchase. And everyone was like, well, why don't you ship them out?

[00:29:14] And I was like, yeah, OK, it can't be that hard. You know, let me just take a look at this. And that's when I started really understanding the global system and what it takes to work in a new narrative and to create a new narrative.

[00:29:27] So we'll start from the beginning. So Cocoa and Ghana is managed by the government. So there's a government body called the Cocoa Board in Ghana that manages it. So anybody who's buying beans has to go through one of their agencies.

[00:29:42] I cannot buy cocoa beans from a cocoa farmer in Ghana. That's illegal. I think I figure what the fines are, but it's jail time or thousands of dollars for breaking this law. So the legal framework did not envisage local makers. It actually just envisaged export.

[00:29:59] So it was we will get Forex for this, so it's going to be managed by this body. And then now that we have more and more local artisanal makers, they're working on a new framework for it. So that doesn't exist.

[00:30:10] Then you realize that, OK, if you're going to make good quality chocolate, you're going to need, well, you need sugar and we have sugarcane, but we don't have sugar. You realize if I wanted to make milk chocolate, I would need milk powder because chocolate doesn't like water.

[00:30:24] So you need to actually use powdered version of milk to make milk chocolate. Well, we don't even have a dairy industry in West Africa. And even if we did, we don't have it as a powdered form. So you actually need to import that.

[00:30:36] Then you realize, oh, we don't have the equipment. So you need to import that and then you get hit with X amount of, you know, importation duties. You also realize that we don't make paper. So packaging needs to be imported.

[00:30:48] You then realize that, especially if you're trying to do something that goes into the international market, you are looking for a certain quality of product because there hasn't been high demand for luxury or high end finishing. That it's something that is not readily available.

[00:31:03] So you're going to have to work on packaging or packaging is more functional than it is suited for the international sort of high end branded packaging. You realize that there's nobody trained up in the chocolate industry. So you're going to have to train everybody yourself.

[00:31:17] And those are the challenges just to produce in country. The pricing for the beans, if you do buy beans in Ghana, you're buying beans at the same price as everybody else. So there is no differentiation between a small maker or a car

[00:31:32] gill or a two ton or any of these larger cocoa processors. We're all buying it at the same price. Then after you finish making your product in Ghana, you have to now get it to the international market that you're aiming for,

[00:31:46] not just a certification and those sort of processes, but physically getting it to the other country. And then you get hit by, you know, and chocolate really doesn't do well with heat. So it's not like something you can throw into any kind of container and send it off.

[00:32:02] You almost need air transportation for much of it. So then you get hit with these exorbitant exorbitant fees. And then you enter a market where you are now more expensive than some of these companies that have been around for, you know, hundreds of years or decades.

[00:32:18] Right. And people are like, hmm, products from Africa that I don't know and that you have all these preconceived, sometimes negative perceptions of next to something that's coming from a European country that actually might be cheaper and which one is that consumer going to buy?

[00:32:32] So these are some of the real challenges that we're getting faced with. Just to give you an example of some of the shipping anomalies. We, you know, we ship our chocolates in bulk to the U.S. and then from there, we send it domestically as people place orders.

[00:32:46] And then we had an order that we had to send to Nigeria. So we did air because these were the bomb on truffles, which require a cold chain for me to send ice chest or the, you know, the consignment, the carton of chocolates to the U.S.

[00:33:01] It's cheaper for me to get it into the U.S. than it is for me to get it on a 40 minute flight from Accra to Lagos. Wow. So then you ask yourself in the Nigerian customers, like,

[00:33:10] what price can I put on that product? Right? Like, what price am I going to put on it, you know, for any other African country, because it's the same kind of numbers that we're talking about.

[00:33:19] So you're almost having to sell it more expensive in the continent than you are outside. So when we talk about creating an enabling environment for producers in the continent, the question is, number one, as Africans, as Ghanians, like what can we do for makers in Ghana

[00:33:36] to be competitive in the international market or within the continent? Right? The second question is for those who are trying to to support producers from cocoa producing countries, how do we have that conversation with consumers to understand the value of things that are made at source?

[00:33:56] And also for those governments, you know, like if you are saying that you are doing support to development or trade, what are you doing to ensure that, you know, this allows those producers to have a shot to enter? So I think there's responsibility on all sides from consumer

[00:34:13] to producers to government for this to work. Yeah. So what do you believe can be done to creating enabling environment for people such as yourself who want to add value to local produce and sell to a international or even local market? I believe that there's many things.

[00:34:33] If I if I start with the cocoa industry or use that as my basis, I think we need to understand what tax breaks can be given to artisanal makers if we know that the equipment that we need to process is not being made locally.

[00:34:47] How do we make sure that there's an exemption on duties for some of these industries, because we decided that we're putting our money behind this industry? How do we encourage the universities and other spaces to educate people so that we actually have a workforce?

[00:35:01] So I think that again, it's a systems response to a systems problem. If it's a systems problem, we need to make sure that we are encouraging the universities to stand behind some specific industries. You can't solve all problems at once.

[00:35:15] But if we pick one industry that we're trying to become players and if it's chocolate and cocoa, let's make sure that those food science universities are teaching and having a good solid understanding of that. The students going into engineering or learning how to make and or repair

[00:35:31] or create equipment that helps in this industry. I would love to see, like I said, the tax exemption for maybe X number of years to get these companies off the ground. I would love to see support like letting go of certain duties.

[00:35:44] So there's like certain ingredients, like sugar, etc., that we're not making locally. So number one, can we start making sugar? Can we get more capacity to do some of these raw ingredients? But also if we know we have to import it for this industry to take off,

[00:35:58] let's figure out how to allow them to have these ingredients in a way that allows them to get it out in a cost effective way. I think honestly, this one I don't have the answer for, but maybe, you know,

[00:36:08] somebody listening does, how do we really work on our logistics and transportation costs within and outside of the continent? And it's not just for products. It's also for us. Like when we talk about movement within the continent, it's crazy how much we spend on transportation.

[00:36:26] I mean, if you're going to do a one hour flight in the US, how much are you paying for that? You're doing a one hour flight from Ghana to Lagos. How much are you spending on that?

[00:36:34] A lot of it is also landing fees, you know, like when I was living in Senegal, half my ticket price was landing fees. So if we actually want this to move forward, there needs to be an understanding of a sacrifice for the greater good.

[00:36:45] Do we want to get into this multi-billion dollar industry? If we do, this is what it looks like. So yeah, I think that the systems approach in trying to make sure makers can be competitive in the international market is what is needed. I agree.

[00:36:58] As an award winning and internationally recognized chef, do you feel a sense of responsibility in terms of representing African cuisine on a global scale or platform? Yeah, first of all, I just wanted to I always try to make sure we stay African cuisines, right?

[00:37:15] So even within Ghana, we have X number of regions that there is such diversity within, whether it's food from coastal areas to the northern areas. But I do feel a lot of responsibility to make sure that we are changing the narrative.

[00:37:34] I know one of my principles, one of our guiding principles for my company is African excellence. So when we're in the kitchen, when we are producing chocolates, we are sort of ambassadors for the continent. So if somebody decides to give our products a try,

[00:37:52] I want to show the best face of what we produce. So I always say we need to always be having a good day. And so I do feel the pressure to make sure that I tell a complete

[00:38:04] a story as I know how and to provide the level of excellence that I know how. And so it's something that I actually take as one of the core parts of the work that I do.

[00:38:14] So I think there's a lot of work that I do on the advocacy side, but one of the other things that I do want Africans to have a sense of pride and ownership of our food and how we eat.

[00:38:24] And I also want others to kind of be like, well, either I didn't know anything about food from the continent and now I want to. Or wow, this is more than I expected. And I do want to have that sort of a ha moment when people interact with

[00:38:37] our food and our products. Fantastic. So you touched on something key there, which is changing the narrative. I guess it's also important that we document and preserve our narrative, which is something that you do through the Medinu Institute. What significant role do you feel documenting and preserving Africa's

[00:38:56] culinary heritage will have on the current and future generations? I feel that there's a lot of the answers of what we're looking for today that's sitting there in that documentation, that's sitting there in the villages, that's sitting with the aunties and the grandmothers.

[00:39:14] And we're losing a lot of that information. And indigenous knowledge is something that I think we don't respect enough or don't have enough time to value. There are ingredients that we don't even know the names of that are disappearing

[00:39:28] in communities that we will never know, but have medicinal properties. But also that our answers to not just health issues, but also just general nutrition. So what I mean by that is I think most of the world is eating. 70 percent of our calories are coming from four crops.

[00:39:47] So one of them is there's rice, there's wheat, there's corn. And I think the fourth one is soy and soy is actually two reasons because it's actually what we feed to the animals that we then consume. But if we're consuming these three or four ingredients,

[00:40:01] then what happens if we start eating more? You know, what happens if we actually explore all there is to actually eat? And every food has its own micronutrients. So we're also starving ourselves of that. We're also missing out on some traditional medicinal properties.

[00:40:17] You know, there's, for example, bitter leaf. The leaf is a leaf that is very, very high in iron and other nutrients. And it's traditionally given to women after they've given birth because they need the iron after they've given birth. You know, so that like there's all these traditions

[00:40:31] that are built around what and how we eat. There's there's a reason for everything. And if we don't understand why it is or was, then we will actually have lost a lot of knowledge in Ghana on Tuesdays. Tuesdays is a taboo day. There's no fishing on Tuesdays.

[00:40:47] This is a traditional sustainability practice. We left the ocean a day to rest to thank it for what it has given us. So that's what I mean, like one of my aunts is in her 80s.

[00:40:57] And when I moved back to Ghana, we spent a lot of time together. And she was telling me how she was a nurse. She was posted to a fishing village. And whenever they would finish early, she would go out to the water.

[00:41:10] And she and her friends would help the fishermen pull the fish in. And she said that from time to time, though, they would come by with fish for her and she'd always be hiding when they would come.

[00:41:19] And I was like, someone's bringing you free fish. Why are you hiding? And she says she didn't have a fridge. And I said, well, then what do you do? And she was like, well, I would make fresh fish soup for the first day.

[00:41:29] And then she would hard fry some for the next day. And then she would get someone to smoke and then they dried some. And then, you know, so all these preservation techniques are things that we now use

[00:41:40] for maybe flavor, but to also be honest, like, you know, with our power situations, we need to also understand and respect them, you know, in the continent. So there's all these practices of why and how we ate.

[00:41:52] And once you start to see if we see that rice is meant for special occasions, then what else can we be eating? You know, and how can we actually use the cadence of which rice was eaten to help us understand how we should be eating that.

[00:42:07] When you look at the traditional ways of eating, we got a lot of our protein from plants. So whether it's igousae, whether it's groundnuts, whether it's lentils, bombara beans, et cetera. We were eating plant based from the beginning and we ate on special occasions

[00:42:23] when there was a ceremony and when you did, you ate the entire animal and you smoked and dried and saved the rest for later. So you wasted nothing. So when we today are talking about sustainability and plant forward, all the answers are there.

[00:42:37] So when I had these conversations with people in the West, I'm like, well, we've been eating plant based and we understand what it means to create creamy textures using nuts and seeds instead of using cream because we're lactose intolerant.

[00:42:49] Like there's a lot you can do with these to create that creamy texture. There's a lot you can do in this current environment. I mean, half the world is like, oh, I'm gluten free. It's like millet, teff, ponio, sorghum are all gluten free.

[00:43:03] So what are we doing about that? You know, how are we integrating that into the food system? So when we start understanding that the world is looking for plant forward, we already have it in our indigenous cuisines.

[00:43:13] When we talk about gluten free, we talk about all these grains that are. So how can we plug ourselves into that economy? How do we use our millet, sorghum to create products that the world needs right now and which also satisfies the question

[00:43:29] that we have around how do we keep rural communities engaged and employed and happy and having livelihoods? Those are all the answers that, you know, when you bring these things together, what's going to happen when climate change comes and there's a lot less predictable rainfall? Well, guess what?

[00:43:45] Millet, sorghum, ponio and teff do not require a lot of rainfall and do not require a lot of synthetic inputs that we need to purchase. So farmers actually could create and grow without a lot of money by taking out the need to buy these synthetic inputs

[00:44:02] that they currently are being forced to do with, you know, a lot of these GMO products that they're in seeds that they're currently being forced to use. So are there any trends that you're seeing in African cuisine currently that you're excited about?

[00:44:16] Well, I'm just excited to see more African chefs out there and diasporic chefs out there that are using these ingredients. I am excited to see more consumers ready to try it. I'm loving seeing new cookbooks coming from African and diasporic chefs and cooks.

[00:44:33] I'm excited to see more of our restaurants in our own spaces before becoming moving back to Ghana, becoming a chef. I had, I think traveled over 40 African countries and one of the things that struck me was that it was hard for me to find our food in restaurants.

[00:44:49] And as a, you know, someone who is traveling, you don't always have time to know like the mom and pop shops or like the bukas and the makis that you should go to. And so I kind of only really got to eat food from those countries

[00:45:01] when I was invited into someone's personal home. So I'm excited to start seeing like these restaurants where I can eat this food without having a personal invitation to go to somebody's house. I'm excited to see some of the products on the shelves in the US and elsewhere.

[00:45:14] So like for me, I'm just I'm glad to see it moving in that direction. And I just want us to focus on how do we make sure that the benefits are not just individual for companies, but also come back to the communities in these countries?

[00:45:28] How do we make sure that as we're making that pitch for that product, like we're actually using small hold farmers in Ghana rather than millet that's been grown in the US, let's say, you know, it might have a slightly higher

[00:45:39] cost, but we need to understand what that says and what that does and what transformation that's going to create. So if we move past trends and look at the future, future of Africa, how do you see African cuisines evolving in the next five years?

[00:45:54] I do see that there's going to be more space for us at the table, whether it's in the continent or outside of the continent. So I'm actually excited to see how we dream it.

[00:46:07] What I mean by that is there is space for our food everywhere and at every level. So whether we're talking about fast casual, you know, whether we're talking about grocery stores, like I think that we are the ones that would limit ourselves. So the sky is the limit.

[00:46:22] So I'm really excited to see it starting now, but I'm actually really excited to see. Let me just put it this way. I'm one of the early, I guess, pioneers in this space as it pertains to what I'm doing with the chocolates.

[00:46:35] But like, I'm excited for the people who are part of my team now in 20 years, what they're going to take with what I started and what they're going to do with it next. And I think that's the thing is like, you know, when you're the first one

[00:46:46] out the field and you've got the cutlass, it's hard work. But you're opening the road for somebody else. So I'm really excited to see the dreams of the people who are seeing the beginnings of my dream. Brilliant, brilliant.

[00:46:57] So if we look closer to home, where do you see yourself and me? Do you know in five years time what contributions do you hope to make to the evolution of African cuisines? In five years time.

[00:47:11] So I would love to see needy new chocolates actually moving into the larger global space. We are still trying to figure out our logistics to get our products into more countries. So I'm hoping that that's something that's going to happen because the more people that consume the products,

[00:47:28] I take the chocolate as a gateway drug into our cuisines. You will taste you hopefully for the first time. If you've never had it before, you will have a chance to taste some of the spice blends that are coming from Somalia

[00:47:40] or the Kate Malay curry and become curious. So that's one piece. The second would be in terms of advocacy work. I would love me to new Institute be able to do much more advocacy work to start to see some of these ideas that we've discussed

[00:47:56] coming to different meeting rooms and tables to see how we can actually start to change lives of small hold farmers. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And I hope to see that too. Thank you. Quote of the week as people, we often have quotes, mantras, African proverbs

[00:48:11] or affirmations that keep us going when times are good or when times are challenging. Do you have one that you can share with us today? I think for me, one of the ones that I hold on to

[00:48:24] he who has not tasted bitter things knows not what is sweet. Very fitting and I like it. Really, as we've come to the end of today's conversation, it's been a great conversation, very different to a lot of the conversations I've had in the past,

[00:48:41] but extremely enjoyable, a lot of value and insights. I was wondering if you had any closing remarks for people who are interested in what you do at Meadunu or who are interested in African cuisines in general? Yeah, I always say if you're interested in African cuisines in general,

[00:48:58] there's a lot of information that's out there now. So it should become easier and easier to find it. But if you're interested in Meadunu, if you're in Ghana and looking for one of our dining experiences, it's meadunu. M-I-D-U-N-U dot com. And then if you're interested in our chocolates,

[00:49:14] if you're in North America, Canada, US, you can reach out to us. It's M-I-D-U-N-U chocolate with an S dot com. And I actually wanted to extend a code for those that are in the US. You can get 15% off. It is unlock 15. And so you can unlock 15% on that.

[00:49:34] But we are also now available in Ghana. Well, we've been available in Ghana, but also Nigeria. So yeah. Fantastic. And I will put all that information in the show notes of the podcast. So yeah, what a way to close today's conversation. It's been a fantastic conversation.

[00:49:51] Thank you for sharing your journey, your experience, the challenges, the opportunities and the future of Meadunu and African cuisines. It's been a pleasure. Salasi, thank you for joining me today. Thank you so much. Any chance to talk about food and economics is a great one. Brilliant.

[00:50:09] And we actually share a common ground. I actually have a degree in environmental science. Interesting. Oh, nice. But it's so interesting. I find that even though I feel like I'm an accidental chef, it's like everything that we kind of are interested in

[00:50:25] usually comes together to create something that gives you a superpower. You know what I mean? So brilliant. No, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. And I will be in contact. Excellent. OK, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. You too. Take care. Bye bye. Bye.

[00:50:41] Thank you to everyone who has listened and stayed tuned to the podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share or tell a friend about it. You can also rate with yours in Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast.

[00:50:56] Thank you and see you next week for the Unlocking Africa podcast.