African cuisines: Recipes for nationbuilding?

Abstract

Whenever possible, the state, ruling élites and other actors in the postcolonial world have appropriated available cultural material such as literature, music or oral heritage and placed this into a basket labelled 'the national culture.' As part of this process, the emergence of national cuisines has been noted and explored by various writers outside Africa. A 'national cuisine' is often built by appropriating and assembling a variety of regional or ethnic recipes and often reflects long and complex culinary histories as well as domestic ideologies. This article examines how African states and other actors have been involved in such processes. Cookery books collating the national recipes have been published in Africa and the West. Alongside national anthems and flags, cuisine increasingly forms a significant part of the 'national culture' sections shown on official national web-sites. National dishes quietly 'flag' the nation as examples of 'banal nationalism.' Various actors in the West, and in particular African-Americans, have been complicit in the building of African national cuisines. In Equatorial Guinea, where the first indications of the emergence of a national cuisine can be identified, various bodies in the old colonial power ‐ Spain ‐ have been involved, as well as the ruling élite. Questions are raised as to how the emergence of African national cuisines might reflect particular colonial histories and how such contributions to the building of a 'national identity' might promote a gendered concept of the nation.

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