The two day Eating for Health and Adventure food carnival held at the Amaica restaurant – a Nairobi based eating house that serves exclusive Western Kenya authentic cuisines attracted mainstream media, an array of food manufacturers, the Ministry of Culture and Social services as well as ordinary citizens. The festival comes in the wake of a looming global food crisis that has seen food prices soar and protests spiral in several African countries.

By exposing the guests from various cultural backgrounds to a variety of dishes that cut across Kenyan cultures, Amaica not only made them reconsider their definition of food, but also sensitized them on the nutritious, medicinal and commercial value of traditional foods.

Although the last century has witnessed three revolutions in agricultural technology in the areas of mechanization, chemistry (hence agrochemical use) and biology (hence GM food), 850 million people are severely hungry. Of these, 200 million are in Sub Saharan Africa.

In her recent National Food Summit address, Philippine president Gloria Aroyo said that farmers require FIELDS in order to make food abundant, accessible and affordable. Not 'fields'  in the sense of farms, but as she explained: “F stands  for fertilizer, I is for irrigation, insurance and Infrastructure; E is for extension and education; L for loans; D for dryers and other post harvest facilities while S is for seeds."

Whereas these aspects of the agricultural revolution are key to boosting agricultural productivity, they will not work until a new revolution-the revolution of the African mindset, comes to play. The looming food crisis will be a great catalyst to bring this change.

When a Kenyan legislator, Robinson Njeru Githae once suggested that starving people eat rats, his remarks were greeted with great scorn. Kenyans couldn’t stomach how a man of his stature could ‘insult’ them. Furthermore, they couldn’t believe their ears when The Kenya Wildlife Service pilot, Captain Solomon Nyanjui, said that he had survived on his urine and leaves for a week after his plane crashed in Mt. Kenya.

Most African cultures have made rigid choices on what they consider to be food. Any alternative outside their narrow definition is not welcome. Governments too have legislated what should be sold  in eateries.Consequently, surrounded by potatoes and arrow roots, the luhya of Western Kenya will still complain that they are hungry. Why? They don’t have maize. Even after feasting on rice, the ordinary Ugandan will still claim he has not eaten. Why, banana’s were missing in the menu!

Away from this rigid mindset, Kenya’s Egerton University has launched a campaign to popularise donkey meat. In a similar development, Zimbabwean government officials are toying with the idea of recommending donkey meat as a substitute for beef which is in short supply nationwide. A government Principal Veterinary Public Health Officer Dr Kaurai Edward Masanganise says there is no harm in consuming donkey meat as research shows donkey meat is a healthy delicacy at par with beef, mutton, chicken and ostrich.

“Scientifically there is nothing wrong in eating donkey meat except that the country’s regulations and statutory laws only permit the eating of livestock such as cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and ostriches. Our social and cultural background considers donkeys as animals for labour,” says Dr Masanganise.

The Zimbabwean findings tally with a recent research by Botswana’s National Food Technology Research Centre (NFTRC) which concluded donkey meat was as good as fish and less susceptible to disease.

The  Chinese, on the other hand, whose rearing of dogs for meat was a cottage industry are now applying factory farming principles to the process.  Faster growing breeds are being introduced and the whole business is being scaled up with modern distribution and marketing techniques. 

Borrowing a clue from them, a number of dog meat joints are mushrooming in Nigeria’s Plateau, Gombe, Kaduna and Adamawa states. Abuja is the latest entrant.

"Dog meat, to the best of my knowledge, is not any different from any other meat," says Dr Yakubu Nyandaiti a consultant at Nigeria's University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital.

If Africa has to survive the current food onslaught, a mindset revolution is imperative. More food festivals that span across cultures and countries must be held to expose Africans to various foodstuffs. The looming crisis will be the best tool to push Africans to the extreme, thereby weaning them from food mindsets that keep them captive to artificial hunger.

Before you kill that cockroach, snake, lizard, spider or worm, think twice. You might be signing your own warrant to starvation and gagging an entirely new food industry!