Nigeria

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofe Achara

An Igbo soup from Abia built around tender achara grass, meat or fish and a rich savoury broth.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofe Akwu

Igbo palm-fruit soup served with rice, distinct from Delta banga by its vegetable and seasoning profile.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofe Nsala

White soup with no palm oil at all, thickened with pounded yam and scented with uziza and utazi leaves, made with catfish.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofe Okazi

Igbo soup made with sliced okazi leaves, stockfish or meat and a richly seasoned broth.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ofe Owerri

An Igbo vegetable soup from Owerri with okazi, ugu, uziza and oha leaves, thickened with cocoyam, rich with assorted meat and fish.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ogbono Soup

Ogbono

Ground wild mango seed cooked into a soup that draws into long strands when lifted, with palm oil, meat, fish and bitter leaf.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ogiri

Fermented melon or castor seed paste, wrapped in leaves and used as a strong savoury seasoning in Igbo soups.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ogogoro

Ògógóró

Distilled palm wine, clear and strong, made in the creeks of the Niger Delta and known locally as 'push me I push you'.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Oha Soup

Ofe oha

Oha leaves torn by hand — never cut with a knife — cooked in a cocoyam-thickened palm oil broth with meat and stockfish.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ojojo

A Yoruba water yam fritter, grated and spiced with pepper and onion, deep-fried until crisp, served with a pepper sauce or pap.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Okoho Soup

Okoho

A traditional Idoma soup from Benue State made from the slimy extract of okoho plant bark, with bushmeat, stockfish and egusi balls, served with pounded yam.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Okpa

Bambara nut flour mixed with palm oil and pepper and steamed in leaves into a firm orange cake, eaten hot for breakfast.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Okra Soup

Ila alasepo

Chopped okra cooked briefly in a pepper and palm oil base with fish and meat, kept slippery and barely cooked.

🇬🇲Guinée Forestière (Nzérékoré / Forest), The Gambia

Palm Wine

Emu

Sap tapped from a palm tree and fermenting from the moment it is collected — milky, sweet in the morning, sour and stronger by evening.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Pap

Ògì

Maize soaked, ground and fermented into a smooth starch, then whisked with boiling water into a sour, silky porridge.

🇱🇷Liberia

Pepper Soup

Thin, fiery broth of goat, catfish or chicken spiced with uda, uziza seed and calabash nutmeg, drunk as much as eaten.

🇬🇭Ghana

Pito

Beer brewed from fermented millet or sorghum in the north, sold from calabashes at drinking spots.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ponmo

Pọ̀mọ

Cow skin boiled until it turns gelatinous and slightly chewy, cut into squares and cooked into stews and soups.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Pounded Yam

Iyan

White yam boiled and pounded in a mortar until it becomes a smooth, elastic dough eaten in pinched balls with soup.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Puff Puff

Balls of sweetened yeast batter dropped into hot oil by hand and fried until deep brown and hollow inside.

🇸🇱Sierra Leone

Roasted Plantain

Bọ̀lì

Firm plantain roasted whole over open coals until blackened outside, split and eaten with roasted groundnuts or pepper sauce.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Semovita

Semo

Semolina flour cooked into a smooth pale swallow, the mass-market alternative to pounded yam sold in bags everywhere.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Shuku Shuku

A Nigerian coconut candy of grated coconut and sugar, rolled into balls and baked or fried until golden.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Star Lager

Star

Pale lager brewed in Nigeria since 1949, the country's first, and the standard bottle at a beer parlour.

🇳🇪Niger

Suya

Thin strips of beef threaded on sticks, coated in yaji — a groundnut, chilli and spice rub — and grilled over open coals, then dusted with more yaji.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Tuwo Masara

Maize flour cooked into a stiff white mound, the northern everyday swallow eaten with okra or baobab-leaf soup.

🇳🇪Kano, Niger

Tuwo Shinkafa

Soft rice pounded into a smooth, slightly sticky mound, served with miyan kuka or miyan taushe in the north.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Tuwon Alkama

Northern Nigerian wheat-flour swallow served with a richly seasoned soup.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Tuwon Dawa

Northern Nigerian sorghum-flour swallow served with soup.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Ugba

Oil bean seeds sliced, boiled and fermented into slippery strips with a sharp smell, eaten in abacha and nkwobi.

🇳🇬Nigeria

Usi

A yellow cassava starch swallow of Urhobo and Isoko cuisine, commonly paired with banga soup.

🇳🇪Niger

Yaji

Ground roasted groundnut mixed with chilli, ginger, garlic, cloves and dried onion — the rub that makes suya what it is.