Food: A Vector for Integration
- Racheal Ikulagba
- Aug 18
- 3 min read
How African flavours, memories, and traditions bridge cultures and build belonging in the diaspora.
Food is more than what we eat; it's a story, a memory, and a connection. For Africans in the diaspora, food carries the heartbeat of home while opening doors to new friendships and understanding.
The 2025 Malta Food Festival lit up the island with colours, aromas, and stories from across the world. The Human Rights Directorate, through its Cultural Museum initiative, invited the African community alongside other nationalities to take part.
It was a beautiful event, a rare and precious opportunity for Africans to showcase our culture, our flavours, and our stories to Malta, our host nation.
“I watched strangers become curious friends over a tray of puff puff.”
As someone who is deeply passionate about food and the stories it carries, I was struck by how easily people connected through taste and conversation. I watched strangers become curious friends over a tray of puff puff, and I felt proud to see our dishes sparking joy and interest.
That experience reminded me of the role food plays in the lives of Africans abroad how it keeps us tethered to our roots, how it shapes the memories of our children growing up away from their ancestral homeland, and how it allows our hosts and other non-Africans to see us in our full humanity.
Africa, with its 54 countries, holds a vast and diverse culinary heritage, each region with its own ingredients, flavours, and techniques. Across the continent, food has always been at the heart of community life shaping identity, nurturing bonds, and marking important moments through gatherings, celebrations, and traditions.
However, in African diasporic communities, our foodways are often under pressure.
We face the challenge of finding the ingredients that make our dishes truly ours. We risk losing recipes and cooking skills when they are not passed down to younger generations. And we navigate the subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to adapt or change our food to fit the tastes of the majority culture.
These forces can slowly erode the culinary heritage that has travelled with us across oceans.
Yet, food remains one of our strongest bridges between home and here.
The aromas that fill our kitchens, the rhythm of turning fufu, the simmer of soups, and the laughter shared over meals are not just daily routines. They are living connections to our past, our people, and our personal histories.
Foodways the ways we source, prepare, and enjoy food carry these connections forward. One expression of foodways is cuisine, which often becomes a community’s most recognisable cultural ambassador.
At the same time, there is a danger: global markets and social media can sometimes flatten complex traditions into a few “famous” dishes, turning them into symbols that erase regional differences. West Africa, for example, is far more than jollof rice and puff-puff, yet these often become the stand-ins for the whole region.
The Malta Food Festival was a perfect example of integration in action.
When someone takes their first bite of a dish they’ve never tasted before, asks for its story, or shares their own food memories in return, something shifts. There’s a breaking down of barriers, a softening of assumptions, and a creation of shared space.
For Africans in the diaspora, this is not just about serving a meal, it's about telling our stories, safeguarding our heritage, and finding common ground in something as simple and profound as sharing food.
When such moments are encouraged and nurtured, food becomes more than a cultural showcase. It becomes a language of belonging that can be spoken and understood by everyone, across borders, generations, and identities.
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