🌍 Vegetarian food in Africa

In Africa, a meal without meat is almost never a sacrifice: it is the ordinary shape of everyday food. The structure repeats from one end of the continent to the other — a grain or a tuber that fills you up, a sauce that carries the flavour, and meat as an extra when there is any. In Kenya, white maize ugali is eaten with kale stewed in tomato, and Kikuyu githeri boils maize and red beans together into a complete meal. In Ivory Coast, fermented cassava becomes attiéké, and plantain foutou is pounded in a mortar before it meets its peanut sauce.

Ethiopia stands apart. The Orthodox calendar there sets aside close to two hundred days a year with no animal product at all, and out of that religious constraint grew the largest vegetarian repertoire on the continent: red lentil misir wot, ground chickpea shiro wat, collard gomen, all laid straight onto injera, the wide sour teff flatbread that serves as plate and cutlery at once.

To the north, semolina and olive oil take over, with seven-vegetable couscous, aubergine zaalouk and the harira of Ramadan evenings. Egypt built two national dishes on the broad bean and the lentil: morning ful medames and the koshari sold on every Cairo street. Further west it is seeds that supply both fat and protein — groundnuts thicken mafé, melon seeds make Nigerian egusi, and black-eyed peas are whipped into fried akara. Below you will find the countries of the region, how many recipes each one has, and enough to cook for a week.