Nigeria

🇳🇬Nigeria

Abacha

Shredded dried cassava soaked and dressed with a palm oil and potash emulsion, garden egg leaves, ugba and fish — eaten cold.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Abula

Àbùlà

A Yoruba combination of gbegiri bean soup, ewedu jute leaf soup and obe ata pepper stew, served with amala, a southwestern Nigerian signature meal.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Adalu

A Yoruba bean and sweet corn pottage, slow-cooked with pepper, palm oil and sometimes plantain or yam, a rustic one-pot everyday meal.

🇳🇬Calabar, Nigeria

Afang Soup

Afang

Shredded afang leaf and waterleaf cooked with palm oil, periwinkle, dried fish and meat into a dark, dense soup.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Afia Efere

Efik white soup made without palm oil, with meat or fish, pepper and fragrant spices.

🇳🇬Lagos, Nigeria

Agege Bread

A soft, fluffy, slightly sweet Nigerian white bread with a stretchy, pillowy crumb, originating from Agege in Lagos, eaten with butter or akara.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Agidi

A Nigerian soft cornmeal pudding, wrapped in leaves and set into a firm jelly-like block, served with soups, stews or akara.

🇬🇭Ghana

Akara

Àkàrà

Peeled black-eyed beans ground with onion and pepper, whipped until airy and deep-fried in balls, eaten hot for breakfast with pap or bread.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Akara Elepo

A palm-oil-fried akara variation with a deeper colour and roasted, savoury bean flavour.

🇨🇫Central African Republic

Akpakpa

Protein-rich seeds from certain cucurbits, ground into a thickening paste for soups and stews; known as akpakpa in the Central African Republic and used much like egusi across West Africa.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Alkaki

Twisted lengths of wheat dough deep-fried and soaked in sugar syrup, made in the north for Sallah.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Alkubus

Steamed Hausa-Fulani bread made from fermented grain batter and served with soup or stew.

🇹🇬Togo

Alloco

Ripe plantain cut into thick slices and fried in red palm oil until the sugars catch, served with raw onion and a chilli sauce.

🇳🇬Ibadan, Nigeria

Amala

Àmàlà

Dried yam or cassava flour whisked into boiling water into a dark brown, almost black swallow, eaten in the southwest with ewedu and gbegiri.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Asaro

A Yoruba yam pottage of boiled yam mashed with palm oil, pepper, onions and sometimes fish or prawns, a rustic comfort food.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Asun

Smoked goat cut into chunks and tossed in a fierce sauce of scotch bonnet, onion and pepper, served in a bowl with a toothpick.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Atama Soup

Efik and Ibibio palm-fruit soup with bitter atama leaves, meat or seafood and aromatic spices.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Banga Rice

Niger Delta rice cooked in palm-fruit extract with spices and meat or seafood.

🇨🇲Cameroon

Banga Soup

Banga

Palm fruit pulp boiled and sieved into a red, oily broth spiced with beletientien and other Delta herbs, cooked with catfish or beef.

🇬🇭Ghana

Beninese Gari

Gari

Roasted fermented cassava granules; consumed dry, with water, or as paste (piron); a versatile cassava product; the instant food of Benin; eaten with sauce or as a snack.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Bitterleaf Soup

Ofe onugbu

Washed bitter leaf cooked with cocoyam paste, palm oil, stockfish and meat into a thick soup that keeps a deliberate bitter edge.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Burukutu

Sorghum or millet beer fermented in the north and middle belt, cloudy brown and sour, drunk from calabashes at markets.

🇳🇬Lagos, Nigeria

Chapman

Nigerian bar cocktail of Fanta, Sprite, blackcurrant cordial, grenadine, bitters and cucumber slices, served over ice.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Chin Chin

Sweet dough cut into small cubes or strips and deep-fried hard, flavoured with nutmeg and sold in bags by weight.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Coconut Candy

Grated coconut cooked with sugar and a little milk until it caramelises, then dried into hard chewy pieces.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Coconut Rice

Rice cooked in fresh coconut milk with pepper, onion and sometimes prawns, so the grain turns pale and rich.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Dambu Nama

Northern Nigerian shredded meat floss seasoned and dried into a portable snack.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Dan Wake

Northern dumplings of bean and cassava flour boiled and tossed with oil, chilli, onion and kuli kuli crumbs.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Donkwa

Roasted groundnuts and maize or rice ground with pepper, ginger and sugar and pressed into balls or bars.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Eba

Fermented cassava granules stirred into hot water into a firm, faintly sour dough, the cheapest and most common swallow.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Echicha

An Igbo preparation of dried cocoyam pieces and pigeon peas cooked into a hearty regional dish.

🇳🇬Calabar, Nigeria

Edikang Ikong

Efik soup of waterleaf and pumpkin leaves cooked with a great deal of palm oil, periwinkle, dried fish and beef, and almost no water.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Efo Riro

Ẹ̀fọ́ riro

Spinach or shoko leaves fried into a base of blended pepper, onion, locust bean and palm oil, with beef, ponmo and stockfish.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Egbo

A Yoruba corn preparation of cooked maize served with beans, palm oil or a savoury sauce.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Egusi Soup

Egusi

Ground melon seeds cooked in palm oil with pepper, leafy greens and assorted meat or fish until the seed sets into soft lumps in the oil.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ekpang Nkukwo

Efik and Ibibio grated cocoyam wrapped in leaves and steamed with palm oil, meat or seafood.