“African food is amazing and so diverse… but it is very underrated,” says South African chef Mokadi Itsweng. Mokadi, part of a growing number of African chefs and food entreprenuers, met with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to discuss using the culinary arts to bring global and regional value to Africa’s agriculture products, creating the kind of new value chain activities and productivity needed to propell Africa’s economic transformation.
“We see food as part of a value chain,” says Geraldine J Fraser-Moleketi, AfDB’s Special Envoy on Gender. “We see the culinary creative industry as quite critical… the bank is trying to open a door in a sector that fits squarely in the ‘Feed Africa’ agenda.”
