What's cooking? The future of food on the African continent
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Welcome to the LSE events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Okay, so welcome everybody, both in the room and at home. My name is Laura Mann and I'm a member of the International Development Department at the LSE and I am the chair of today's event.

This is part of the LSE 2025 Festival, and I'm also very grateful to the Ferdows-Lalje Institute for Africa for helping to host and organize the event. Before we start, I have to kindly ask you to silence your phones. I have to say that this event will be recorded and will hopefully become available as a podcast. And finally, in the event of a fire, we will shepherd you out to the Lincoln's Inn fields just over there.

So with that out of the way, I'm very happy to say that we're here to talk about food. We're here to talk about the history of African cuisine and food culture, but also to connect back to questions of production, trade, investment and climate change.

We're also here partly to launch the book of my dear colleague, Professor David Luke's new book, which is called How Africa Eats. And both his book and Deepo's book are available at the back, and they're both very welcome or happy to sign copies at the end of the event.

So Professor David Luke is a professor of practice and the strategic director of the Fidoz Lalji Institute at Africa. He oversees the program on African trade.

And previously, he was the director of African, I'm hoping I'm going to get this right, the African Trade Policy Center at UNICA. And he was focused in particular on African trade integration. And his previous book, How Africa Trades, makes a very good case for trade integration. And it's really become a favorite of our students in the department. Thank you.

His new book turns to questions of food and food security and investigates how finance, investment, foreign aid and climate change interact with policies in holding back Africa as a kind of breadbasket of the world. And what was I going to say here?

Yes, and we're also really happy to have another expert on African trade, which is Edwini Kwame Kesi, who is the Director of the Agriculture and Commodity Division at the World Trade Organization. He's worked in a number of posts, both academic and policy-focused, both in Africa and the Pacific region, and he also focuses on both agriculture and African regional trade integration.

We're also very, very lucky to have a proper expert on food, the Nigerian-born British chef,

Joke Bakare, whose restaurant Chisuru, first in Brixton and is now in Fitzrovia, is the first, or it received a Michelin star from last year, and she is now the first female black chef to win a Michelin star. And her restaurant also won the, or you won the Best Chef Award at the National Restaurants Awards last year.

So I recommend you all go to this restaurant. It's the only time preparing as a chair has made me literally salivate. So please go and check it out.

Finally, we have Dipo Falojin, who is a journalist and he is the author of Africa is Not a Country, which is also available today. He is a prominent writer who has written in publications like The Guardian, The New York Times, Esquire, and Vice. And so we're also really, really happy to have him join us today. He also has papal origins, born in Chicago, but raised in Lagos and lives in London.

So what we're going to do, I think, is everybody will speak for about five to ten minutes, and then we're going to open up for questions from both the audience and at home. So please think of good questions as we listen to them speak. I think maybe we'll go in order, if that's okay. Or you don't want to go first? I don't want to go first. Okay. So maybe we'll start with Edwini, and then we'll see who wants to go next. Okay.

Okay, so my remarks would basically focus mostly on the trade aspects of the book. Like she said, I have been working for the World Trade Organization for 30 years. I'm now the Director of the Agriculture and Commodities Division, and one of the issues we have been grappling with at the WTO is how do we

enhance Africa's food security because at the end of the day, trade is not an end in itself. Trade has to benefit countries and if we see Africa, we look at SDG 2, according to the FAO and the United Nations, we are a long way off in achieving SDG 2. So much of our work focuses on food security. Now the book edited by David is quite a good book in the sense that

It basically challenges the notion that food security is mostly because of production deficit. But the books make the case that we need to have a holistic approach. We need to look at the trade aspects. We also need to look at the climate aspects as well, because invariably, Africa accounts for only 4% of global emissions, but it bears the brunt.

In terms of we have seen weather precipitation, we have seen soil degradation, and all of this have an impact on food security of Africa.

Africa which is quite strange because Africa has about 65% of the world's unused arable land and lots of water so Africa should actually be very food secure and it could be the breadbasket of Africa of the world but unfortunately as a result of a confluence of you know you could say mishaps you know bad government policy

The international trading system also not being very supportive. All of this have played a role in making Africa insecure about, you know, a fate of Africa's people and that nourished and in some countries, you know, it's even higher.

in terms of around 50% of people are insecure. So the greatest contribution I think about the book is by undertaking an approach which doesn't focus only on one. Previous books have focused mainly sometimes on trade or on the climate, but this book brings together everything and I think we need to have a holistic approach.

Now, being a trade person, I'd also like to focus on the trade issues where I think there was a good discussion of trade. I mean, I think there can be no question that

Trade is a force for good. If we look at the world, since the end of the Second World War, we have seen the tremendous expansion of the global economy. According to UNCTAD last year, world trade amounted to $33 trillion. So this is quite a remarkable achievement.

However, we have seen that the gains from trade have accrued only to a handful of countries, the developed countries and the larger developing countries such as China, India. Africa's share in world trade in 1980 was 5%. It is now less than 3%.

And obviously if you look at trade also in terms of agriculture is the same. Africa is very food dependent. Now we do have the WTO system as I said it has worked very well. A lot of countries are quite worried about recent geopolitical tensions which basically challenge the foundational principles of the WTO including the non-discrimination principle as well as security and predictability of market access.

And I think a lot of countries, I was in Namibia a couple of days ago for the Commonwealth Trade Minister's meeting and country after country stressed the importance of the rules-based multilateral trading system because businesses need security and predictability. Without that, they cannot invest. And I think this is what the WTO system has given the world since 1948. Obviously, there are problems.

You know, no one can say the WTO, the WTO itself recognizes that it needs to reform. We had our last trade round, the year ago round, which finished in 1993. The agreement went into force on the 1st of January. And we have been very successful in reforming the WTO. But it is a fact, you know, the rules are outdated.

And we need to update the rules. And this is what we are trying to do. In the area of agriculture, it's very important, and the book makes reference to the prevalence of subsidies. Because under the WTO, you find that increasingly, it's not only the rich countries, but also developing countries such as China and India. They are providing a lot of subsidies to support the agriculture. And this has...

or they have impacts for African agriculture and food security. African countries are much more food dependent, so they import food. And we have seen with COVID-19 and also with the war in Ukraine, how this could have a profound impact on the food security of African countries. Because what happened after

after COVID-19 and also the Russian war, a lot of countries imposed export restrictions. And if they impose export restrictions, the impact of that will be higher food prices. And so African countries had to deal with that. You know, when India imposed

export restrictions on rice. A lot of African countries all of a sudden sold their food bill and already we are talking about a continent where they already use a lot of their resources to pay interest and all of a sudden they had a food debt. And this is because of the over-reliance on trade.

I think we, as I said, we cannot basically, trade is a force for good. Without trade, there cannot be food security. No one country can claim to be food self-sufficient, even the United States, because trade acts as a conveyor belt, whereby it basically moves food from surplus areas to deficit areas. That is the positive impact of

trade. Without trade, you know, a lot of countries, be it Japan or Singapore, so many countries are dependent on trade for their full security, including African countries. Now, the book makes the case that we need to tighten the VTO rules, and I think it's a fair point.

because if you according to the OECD individual farmers producers receive close to 630 billion between 2020 to 2023 and obviously this has an impact on African farmers because their products have to they become they cannot become competitive and most of them they have to go out of business because

because of cheaper imports. So this is an area where we need to address and I think the book makes a persuasive case for reforming WHO. The book also talks about market access and it's quite true because if you look at African countries for example, sometimes they cannot export their food because they cannot meet the sanitary and phytosanitary measures of their trading partners and without them being able to

sell their food, then obviously they wouldn't also have the resources to purchase food or have either nutritious food. So that also impacts on the food security of countries. So in the context of the WTO, I think there's a lot which can be done. The book also makes the case that maybe the AFCTA, the African Continental Food Trade Area,

may help Africa in terms of intra-African trade. As I said, I was in Namibia, I just came back yesterday actually from Namibia. And when I was talking to the Namibians, they were very excited because they had started selling beef to Ghana. I come from Ghana, by the way.

So they told me, "We have started selling beef to Ghana." I said, "Really?" And they said that the question that what they face is scale, because there's so much demand from Ghana. And imagine Nigeria, which is next door to us, a huge market.

And so with the AFCTA, there could be opportunities, you know, like I said, you know, we have Namibia, countries like Botswana and others, you know, which can scale up. And it's not only restricted to beef, but other agricultural products. So although the

book basically says that it can increase by only 5.4% in terms of increasing Africa's inter-trade in agricultural products, but it also lists some of the challenges like logistical issues, a host of non-tariff barriers, proliferation of standards, which obviously adds to the cost of doing business. So the book makes a persuasive case.

for African countries to try to streamline and also help businesses to grow on the continent. I think it is a very timely publication because, like I said, even in the WTO, we only look at food security from a trade perspective, which is good. As I said, trade, everybody accepts the importance of trade, but we need to look beyond that.

We are not an institution for climate change, but a lot of WTO members also have argued for the need for us to take a holistic approach because in our discussions, for example, you find that the developed countries are only concerned about the environmental aspects of sustainability.

African countries on the other hand says, well look, we don't have to only look at the environmental aspect, but we need also to look at the other dimensions of food security, which is social as well as economic. Because if they do not have the ability to sell their food, to get the resources, how could you then talk about food security? So they have been urging a much more holistic approach in our negotiations

And we are trying to do that, but as you all know, the multilateral trading system is at a crossroads now. We are having a lot of headwinds, but it was quite reassuring that at the Commonwealth Trade Ministers, all of them said, look,

We may have to fix the WTO, but we don't have to throw the baby in the bathwater. The WTO has been a force for good. We have seen that it has lifted over a billion people across the world from absolute poverty. And it is the turn of Africa also to leverage trade to see improved living standards. Africa hasn't yet done that.

And, you know, so far the system has benefited Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia. All the developed countries have been able to leverage trade to increase the living standards of their people. We need to make sure that we have inclusive development. And inclusive development also means having a trading system which is also supportive to the aspirations of countries.

So I think I would like to commend David for the impressive book, and I think it will be very useful not only for policymakers at the national, regional, and international level. It's also written in very accessible language, not very easy, not very difficult to understand, and the arguments are very clear. So I'd like to congratulate, and I think the book will be very useful as the world tries to

deal with this chronic issue. It's not only Africa, South Asia also. There is a lot of undernourishment, undernourished people in South Asia. And I think the books, some of the lessons and the recommendations would also be applicable to other developing parts, not only Africa. So I'd like to stop here. Thank you very much.

Excellent. And I think also this idea of trade being integral to food security is particularly important in terms of climate change and the kind of way that it's going to have uneven effects, being able to move food around to where it's needed. So who would like to go next?

Well, thank you so much for LSE for inviting me here. It really is a pleasure to be here because this is a particular topic that is very central to my work and I know it's very central to David's work as well in that the importance of food, not only the economic impact of food, but I look at it in terms of the cultural impact of food and the way in which food can have a huge impact on the future of Africa. My work is centred around

Trying to shift the stereotypes around Africa for too long people see Africa through the prism of poverty and Safari and very little else This goes back to 1884 and the Berlin conference when the colonizers of the day Started this campaign to depict Africa as a place full of you know Essentially uncivilized savages who can't look after themselves who can't cater for themselves in order to justify the colonization of the continent and

And so since then, there's been a struggle across the region to get people to see us for our individual identities, for the 54 countries, 1.4 billion people and over 2,000 different languages that exist. And so the challenge comes through educating people better on our histories, educating people about what existed before colonization and also how colonization worked and how our individual countries themselves were created. And a lot of that was through stripping as much of our individual identities as possible.

And since the independence era in particular, countries have been working to bring that back, to fight back for their own individual identities and to celebrate those individual cultures. And that was a big challenge, especially at the start of the independence era, after you'd sort of fought for the right to govern these countries that we never wanted in the first place. We had to build new identities, new cultures, new traditions.

And we did a lot of that work and when it came to presenting it to the rest of the world, we found it incredibly difficult because the rest of the world had bought into those stereotypes that had been created back in the late 1800s. Stereotypes around us all essentially being the same. All of us just spending our days trying to survive. No celebrations, no concept of anything that could be exported to the rest of the world.

And so getting people to understand that history also comes with getting people to hopefully start to appreciate us for our individual cultures. And so what are the many effective avenues in which we can do that? One of those we've seen over the last few years has been through music. Music has been an incredibly impactful tool

that has allowed people to start to think a lot about, oh, where does this particular genre come from? Whether it's Afrobeats that came mainly from West Africa, whether it's Amapiano from Southern Africa. Another positive avenue has been through film, whether it's Nollywood and other local traditional film cultures. And one of the ways in which I think people underestimate the continent and what it has to offer is through food.

and food culture, and not only the history of food culture, but also new traditions that are coming up every day. And that is something that I hope people will start to see, because as soon as people start to become far more curious about the different cultures and the identities, the diversity that exists across 54 countries, then that's when they'll start looking at, okay, what do people do every day? What do people eat? And I think a lot of our identities are expressed through food, and not only how we eat, but in the way in which we all gather,

in the specifics of the climate that exists within each individual country, in terms of what is local to us, how different that is, not only across different countries, but also within countries as well.

In Nigeria, where me and my family are from, this is a country of over 250 different languages. The food cultures of the capital Abuja and the economic hub of Lagos are completely different to what exists in the east. Across the east, within that, there are dozens and dozens of different food cultures through there as well. And so I think food is such an important way of

getting people to appreciate the individual identities that exist across the continent. And so looking into sort of the broader topic of this discussion, sort of the future of food across Africa, I think we're starting to see so many wonderful, you know,

restaurants across the, and I don't think it's a coincidence that now that we have a younger generation who are more interested in these conversations around history and diversity and race and colonization, you're starting to see a lot more people going out of their way to look for that diversity, to go out of their way to say, oh, I want to go and try Senegalese food, I want to go and try Nigerian food, I want to go and try Kenyan food, and looking for that specificity

across cities like London and around the world. And I think that looking into the future, just seeing, you know, not only from Chef Joaquin's brilliant restaurant, I think you're starting to see that recognition because the talent has always been there. The passion across the region has always been there for people wanting to celebrate their individual identities, wanting to celebrate their local cuisines and wanting to present who they are to the rest of the world. And

And I think food is something that is uniquely consistent across the world in terms of the pride that we all have for our local cuisines and wanting to share that with the rest of the world. And that opportunity for Africa to do that really will be huge. It gets people thinking about

wanting to experience it on a local level, once you experience it in your local city, wanting to say, oh, I want to go there and experience more. Not only is there this specificity with food, but also that must exist across so many different other cultural avenues, whether it's art, fashion, culture is such an important way of connecting us in so many different ways. And then we start to look into the history of food and the importance, for example, that

so many different food scenes and food cultures across Africa have had across the world as well. You know, the

west african slaves who were taken into the us essentially built the southern food culture across america whether it's through traditions of rice whether it's how food is presented a lot of that came from black slaves and they didn't get the recognition that they deserve from that and so understanding both the history and the present i think will really be hugely beneficial in giving the continent

what it needs when it comes to shifting the traditional narratives around Africa as a place in which everyone is the same while also offering an opportunity for people to see us for our individual diversity and food is at the heart of that and the work in which you know Dr Luke and Professor Kwame and Jeff Jocko are doing I think is really really crucial in ensuring that

We put food at the heart of that, and that is another avenue for which people can express their true identities across Africa. Thank you.

And it's interesting to think about what that is also, like the economic side of that, of decommodifying food, attaching more meaning to it but more knowledge to it and allowing people to capture more value from their food and the knowledge that people have around agriculture as well. So really looking forward to hearing David Luke's comments about all of that.

this I'm getting increasingly hungry so Jo Kay would you like to finish us off oh gosh thank you so much for inviting me here to be a part of the discussion what Dr. Edwina has said and Dipo they've said a lot of the things that I wanted to touch on I am coming to this discussion as a

a person growing up in west africa in the 80s and 90s where there was such a it was a great change at that time if you if you were around at that time there was such great change in fortunes in politics in things big disruptions and that you could see in the food scene

We are coming to this discussion also as a restauranteur cooking West African food in the UK and trying to educate people about our food because a lot of conversation around West Africa or Africa in general has been that there's not much value in the food in our food scene. And it's a good thing now that there are lots of young people coming up and trying to talk about

the culture behind the food and how we celebrate and how we, how it's such a fundamental part of us and not just tradition. It's not just nutrition. It's a cultural thing. And for us at the restaurants, what we've tried to do when I first started was,

to share this food tradition, trying to modernize our food as well as introduce people or the culture behind the food being something that's quite integral in the

in the guest experience that we try to create in the restaurants, which is we try to bring the old foods, we say old foods, food that slowly dying off in West Africa because new imports have come in, have kind of taken over.

Casing points, there's this dish which we call Thalia that is eaten all over the northern parts of West Africa, which is a pasta-based dish. And that dish traditionally is made with millet and sorghum and sometimes wheat because wheat is growing around the northern parts of West Africa. Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy.

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Now, back to the event. And when we introduced it to the restaurants, a lot of people were quite taken aback that we had a form of pasta. And the pasta, if you've had soba noodles, had the same kind of texture as soba noodles when I was growing up.

but that has slowly been taken over by new imports of pasta and when you go to places in northern west africa where the italia it is what you get will be the pasta and those those kind of food is like slowly dying out and the young people except they talk to older people that would know that we used to have this this was an integral part of our food culture

And in the restaurant, as I said, we try and bring out old foods that we're not eating anymore. One of that is fonio. But I think even in the world scene, fonio now has become something that people are talking about, about how me growing up, it was looked at as peasant fare because it was only if you were a farmer that you'd eat that because it was such a nutrient-dense food. And it was because of...

The names that it was given also put a lot of West Africans off, which eventually became something that if you were in the city, you don't eat anymore. It was called hungry rice. It was supposed to be something that you eat if you don't have enough money to buy rice or even the broken rice, so you eat hungry rice.

And that kind of has stigmatized the food itself. But now, with a lot of discussion around looking at nutrient-dense food, looking at foods that are resilient to climate change, that has become something that's been spoken of now more and more. And at the restaurant, what we did was, because it was something I grew up eating, what we did at the beginning was to get the phonio from a

women's collective in the northern parts of Nigeria but because of geopolitical issues

tensions in the region, most of those farms are just left fallow because nobody is farming it because of tensions around the area. And that part of the... Because it was mainly women that farmed and sold these things. That part of... That collective has died now. We are having to source it from other places. And I think part of what David talked about with incentives...

incentives around

small collectives and small holder farms to be able to produce things. It will help small collectives like those to be able to produce these things, those produce that we chefs, new chefs of the generation, the new chefs of this generation are introducing people to. It will help people, other people that are outside the culture know more about these things. And

It's wonderful. Thank you. So David, do you have some comments for us? Sure. Yes, of course.

First, just to thank everyone for being here on such a hot, sweltering afternoon. So I think it's somewhat ironic also that we are talking about climate change as one of the elements that impact agricultural production. But I think if there is any doubt about the changing climate, the kind of weather that we've been experiencing, which is unusual and

and also impacting infrastructure because I do know that some people had difficulty getting here because of transport and systems not working and so on in this heat and all that. Next, let me just also say that it was fun working on this book and I just want to recognize my co-authors. William Davis is in this room. We'll give a shake.

But, yeah, wonderful. Online is Jamie McLeod in New York, Colette Van Der Ven in Geneva, and Vinay Alkaraz in Mauritius. So we really had fun working on this, although the issue that we were dealing with was not really a fun issue because we were looking at...

food deprivation in Africa and trying to explain it from a climate perspective, from an agricultural policy perspective and from a trade perspective. So in a sense it was a challenging subject to look at from these, along these dimensions, but all the same we had a lot of fun as we worked on it.

We quickly arrived at some conclusions. The first conclusion is that the extent of food deprivation in Africa really is a function of poverty.

that there is enough food on the planet for everybody, but the problem really is poverty. And so we wanted to interrogate this and build upon previous work that we had done to look at the nature of production in Africa, the nature of trade, and essentially that is what is the, if you like you have the bottleneck, you have the problem, that African economies are not growing fast enough.

in relation to not only population growth, but also in terms of being able to diversify economies and able to transform economies, formalize economies and so on. So that's the first issue that we looked at to say that this is a problem of poverty and is related to the nature of African economies.

The second issue we looked at, although none of us were experts in this, is to look at how climate impacts agriculture. And here

We looked at statistically that the climate in GID is changing, more extreme weather events are being recorded and so on. And so we developed a model to show how these global warming, increasing temperature on the planet is impacting food production, agriculture,

And then also, it's not just the heat from global warming, but also floods and heavy rains and so on. And all of this impacts the growing of food, as you would imagine. So that is happening. Also, incidents of issues like the invasion of locusts, which again is related to a changing climate and ecosystems and

and so on, all of which impact food production. So we established that as well. Then the third thing, as you've heard, is that the problem is not a production problem as such. And so for this, we drilled into, we asked ourselves, what are the

eight or ten key commodities that are produced and consumed by Africans. So obviously we had to narrow the list but we were looking at millions of Africans, what do they really eat? So for that we ended up with a list that included: yam, cassava, rice, wheat, poultry, meat, fish,

Am I leaving something, maize? I cannot leave maize out at all. The East Africans here would be . - The Southern Africans. - Yeah, the Southern Africans, yes indeed. So we looked at production. And so there is not really a production problem as such, although only yam and cassava are being produced competitively.

partly because of subsidies in other places and so on, which Edwini has talked about, that make production in all these other areas less competitive. The case of fish was, for me, particularly painful because I come from a coastal country, Sierra Leone.

We established that there's a lot of unregulated illegal fishing and some of this fish that is taken from African waters actually sold back to Africans. So you know that too is something that we established and we thought is one of the areas the WTO is working on to regulate international fishing.

Then we looked at African agricultural policies. And here, by the way, we used a lot of data because we wanted to make sure that what we were saying is sort of uncalled and could be measured and that sort of thing. So we looked at how much African governments are spending on agriculture,

how much investment is going into agriculture both by Africans themselves, so private investment and used as a proxy for this private capital formation in the agricultural sector. We looked at foreign aid, how much foreign aid is going into agriculture, foreign direct investment. Also we looked at food aid and how food aid impacts the availability of food.

Looking at all of these factors really was disheartening because African governments are not spending as much as they themselves have committed to spend on agriculture in their own programs. So we looked at that.

Private investment is not going into agriculture in the same way as it is in other regions that we looked to compare to see how much of that is happening. And again, we looked at some of the reasons for that. Interest rates are very high in African countries, so for farmers who also are marginalized from the financial system and so on,

difficult for them to access finance. Foreign direct investment when it comes in is very specific and it's you know does have an impact in many cases a positive impact but limited impact because not much enough of it is coming in. ODA, order aid

very little of it is going into African agriculture, which was something of a surprise to me personally, because ODA is predicated on supporting the poorest, and where you find the poorest is actually in agriculture, but very little ODA actually was going into agriculture. So when you look from the finance investment, you look at all of that, you can see that

that too is a major problem. Then, yes, we looked at the...

trade policies, we looked at this trade agreement, the African Continental Free Trade Area, and so on. The reason why we said the impact will be so low, and I think you quoted the figure, really, is that the trade is already liberalized. Much of it is already liberalized. The problem is infrastructure, non-tariff barriers, those sorts of

problems, customs, getting things across borders and so on. So, you know, again, this was what we concluded on this. We looked at, since 43 African countries are net food importing countries, we looked at where this food was coming from.

Much of it is coming from Europe, also from places like Ukraine. So the Russian-Ukraine war has impacted especially for products like wheat that goes into bread, although only for a small subset of countries like mainly North Africa and to some extent East Africa, but all the same, it's had an impact. We could see food also coming from places like Brazil,

Turkey is another new exporter of food to Africa. And as has been said, yes, of course, trade makes food available, but it's somewhat disheartening that much of what Africa is importing is what it can produce itself. But that's not really happening.

We looked at the WTO rules and we touched on this. Just very quickly to say that, just to give you some figures to put some of this in perspective, that countries like China, the EU, Japan, India,

They are subsidizing agriculture to the tune of 80 to 90 billion dollars a year. The median GDP of the median African country is 16 billion dollars a year. So you can see the asymmetry here.

And of course we call for WHO rules to be reformed, but we also identified the conundrum. And for me this was, again in doing research you do arrive at this Eureka moment. And this Eureka moment was the WHO subsidies are making food available across the planet. That's why we have enough food in the world. But these same subsidies

making food production less competitive in many other places, including in Africa. So how do you resolve this conundrum? It's not going to be easy. Then finally, just to say that again, coming back to climate and the land on this is just simply that

much of what Africa needs to do in regard to this changing climate has to do with adaptation. And again, the research unit, a lot of impressive things are happening, seed varieties that are drought resistant and so on. Good research is happening, but that could be scaled up. But then just to conclude on this, as you've heard from both Joke and Dipo,

We did have fun writing the book, and also looking at these varieties of food that Africa produces. And really, African food could, if production is scaled up, could be a great benefit to the guests of the world. And if anybody wants to doubt this, do visit Joker's restaurant, Chisuru. My wife and I were there two nights ago with some friends, and I could tell you the flavors,

are just incredible. Let me leave it at that. Thank you again for coming out on a Saturday afternoon. Thank you so very much. Thank you. So we're going to open up for questions. I'm going to maybe try to take questions in the audience. I'm very happy to take questions from younger people too, if you have a question. Okay, so we have two questions or three questions in a row here.

and maybe in the next round. So if you could say very briefly who you are and to try to keep your question short so we can hear from everybody. Thank you so much for the talk. I'm very interested in a trade topic. My name is Rita Nguyen. I'm just a curious layperson.

The first question is, you touched upon tariff and trade barriers within Africa, but what are the non-tariff barriers that could be addressed on? And the second question is, what are the roles of the private sector to address that? And then the person in front of you.

Hi, my name is Kumreen Maluman-Rodrigo. I'm a PhD student at the Open University. Thank you for a very interesting session. My question is to all three of you. From a trade perspective, from a climate change perspective, and from a diversification of agricultural perspective, how do you see the role of cocoa production in Africa, especially West Africa? And then the person in front.

Good afternoon. My name is Margaret. I traveled all the way from Norwich to come here today. Thank you so much for my ticket. My question is to Ms. Bakary. When you appeared on Ms. Mary Berry's program a couple of years ago, you said, wow, I have to visit this restaurant. I was up and down, up and down, bricks and looking for it, couldn't find it. So please, my daughter's birthday is coming up in December. Can we have your restaurant name so that we can come and eat? We will pay you.

Thank you. So should we take those in order? So the first question was about non-tariff barriers. Shall I? No, absolutely. The issue is not tariffs, at least within Africa. And I know tariffs have been in the news recently. And Edwini very diplomatically was talking about how the WTO could be reformed. But tariffs have been in the news because, of course,

many governments around the world, not just the US, looking at how to ensure that trade benefit communities that are currently being left behind, not a conundrum which is not going to be easy to solve. And Edwin, I did quite appreciate how you navigated that without mentioning the US and all that. But you're right, the key issue is really non-tariff barriers

procedures and customs to get food across. Don't forget, food is a perishable commodity and if food is going to sit at the border for two or three days, and there have been cases of that because of inefficiencies at the border to get things through, then it is a problem for food as a business.

Then, of course, infrastructure, a huge infrastructure deficit across Africa. Then, you know, one could also throw into this, I think Edwini touched on it, food safety rules. Again, you know, much of what is being traded, if you think about it, fish, poultry, meat, and so on, you know, so you want to make sure that the food is safe. So, yes, all these non-tariff barriers have been very important.

Okay, and the second question, if anybody wants. I think it was about cocoa. Well, in the WTO we had a seminar, I think about six weeks ago, about cocoa, and it was very, very interesting.

Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire account for about 60% of the exports of raw cocoa beans, but when it comes to the manufacture of, let's say, the Finnish product chocolate or chocolate powder, they account for less than 6% or thereabouts.

So we do have a problem and in trade we talk about tariff escalation that the tariff structure of many countries, be it China or India or Europe, is structured in such a way that if countries export whether the raw cocoa beans, that should be tariff free, duty free. But if it is processed, then it attracts higher duty. Having said that though,

We find that in the European Union, the UK and others, they have programs where African countries can export duty-free, quota-free. So it used to be a significant problem in the past, but no longer as a result of agreements. But it is true that the tariff structure of some countries revealed tariff escalation. Mm-hmm.

But cocoa, as you rightly pointed out, the African countries or the producers, they get very little. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. But the cocoa producers, and this is because of the inability of African countries to add value to the cocoa beans. So there's much more needs to be done to ensure that African countries do add value rather than exporting the raw cocoa beans or coffee.

Okay, and then the final question was very much for you, Jo. What was it that you asked? Do you want to know where the new restaurant is? It's in Fitzrovia. It's just north of Oxford Circus. Okay. So we're going to take a couple of questions from online and then the person in the back with the black tank top. Yes, because she was waiting from the first round. Okay.

I have two questions online. Jokey Bakari, one for you. How can people be encouraged to embrace traditional food? As a Zimbabwean, we have so many plant-based dishes that are not so popular, and there's a huge focus on meat consumption. A person was anonymous, as is the second person, and it's a question for the panel.

Where do GMOs, genetically modified foods, fit into the conversation on food production? Rainy seasons are shortening in Zimbabwe, most likely due to climate change, and maize crop is not maturing. Also, how can farmers divest from monoculture practices?

Okay, and the person in the black tank top. So my name is Aida. I'm doing my Master's in International Development in Humanitarian Emergencies here at the LSE. And I really like the point about individual identities within the continent.

But my question is, so we talked about intercontinental trade as well. And when we think about African restaurants as well, or like food, you have a lot of restaurants that are just African restaurant. Well, we know that if you have a Nigerian restaurant, a European restaurant, Burkina Be restaurant, it's going to be different. So,

Where do you draw the line to, okay, we come as one African when it comes to food or like our individual identities as well, or like our country's just exporting what it is that we consume or like producing it? You know, how do you kind of know where to come as one and where to broadcast your individual identity? Thank you. I'm going to sneak in one final question from the front.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Anika Golo and I'm an ex-LSC student. So my first question is directed towards Professor Luke and the question was with regards to to what degree are the contents of your book owe a legacy to the works of the likes of Amartya Sen and co? And then my second question, if I could, to Deepo, what are your views on cultural appropriation as we've seen with Caribbean food and might West African food be at risk of that as well?

Okay, so we'll start with those. So, I don't know, maybe we haven't heard from Deepo yet, so maybe... I understand that, especially across the Caribbean community, there are concerns over seeing an opportunity and exploiting that opportunity as interest has been very solid across our communities for a long time. I think it's something that...

I think at this point, I think there is so much, I think there are so many new and exciting restaurateurs and exciting creators who are really, really adamant on trying to

take up that space themselves and to ensure that they are staying very true. I think the audience is looking for authenticity, especially a lot of young people in particular seem to be searching for truly authentic experiences. And so I feel speaking to young people as I do, I feel like they

not only want to experience these things, but they want to be as close to the source as possible. And so they are very nuanced in researching about who's actually behind the restaurants themselves. So I do hope that that's something that

isn't as likely to occur as much into the future. But I think that's something that anybody who is looking to experience a culture for themselves or anything new should certainly, and we should all be very loud about certainly doing their research and ensuring that authentic creators and restauranteurs

are the ones who are given the space to create and they're the ones that we go to first. So just the fact that, you know, I've heard this sort of brought up elsewhere, I do think that there is, amongst young people in particular, you know, that natural desire to look for authentic experiences. And hopefully we can all share in that and encourage it as much as possible. Because certainly as this, you know,

wider across the region, food across the region becomes more and more popular. People look for ways to make money. I guess in terms of culture from across Africa, I'm not sure it really has. We haven't really seen it in film, for example, yet. A lot of the films are still created and written by filmmakers across the region. And in music, I think it's still very much authentic. But it's certainly something that we need to be wary of.

I've been told that we do have to finish at 3 o'clock and I have taken far too many questions but I don't know, does anybody have a very short and sweet answer to any of the other questions? I think I'll just give a really brief like the first question that you asked from the person online what we've done is we have embraced being modern but at the same time being

very aware that we will be the first people telling people about our food. So trying to preserve the culture around it. And in the restaurant, one thing we've noticed is because most of our vegetarian or vegan based dishes are the most popular because it's been something that we've eaten for generations in West Africa.

So that hasn't been any issue for us. Also, for us, we say our restaurant is West African because we want to show in the region how similar we are across the board. But before the Berlin Convention, we were just collections of restaurants.

what's the word, kingdoms. And after the Berlin Convention, we became just fit into different countries that are not really us. So we don't say we're Nigerian, we say we're West African. And we're cooking food from this region, we're cooking food from that region. So in that way, we've shown people that we're individuals with this, but at the same time, we celebrate our collective history and culture.

Okay, I think we need to end there, but both David and Deepa will be signing books, so if you want to chat with them about your questions, please come and join us. But let's give a very big round of applause for such a wonderful panel.

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