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A nine minute documentary about how much African kitchens already share. Free to watch.
United by Food is a documentary built around a truth most Africans feel but rarely say out loud: that long before borders divided us, food connected us. The same palm nut soup eaten in Lagos is eaten in Accra and in Dakar. Fufu in Nigeria is Ugali in Kenya and Pap in South Africa. Jollof rice in one form or another feeds the entire West African coast. We have been eating the same food under different names for generations. United by Food holds that mirror up to the continent.
The film is not a nostalgia project. It is a call to action. It documents what we stand to lose as Western food culture quietly replaces our own, meal by meal, kitchen by kitchen. And it argues that when Africans start exploring each other's cuisines on purpose, something shifts. When a South African cooks Ghanaian food at home. When a Kenyan sits down to a Nigerian meal. When food does what politics never managed to do and makes Africa feel like one continent.
Guinea-Bissau to Angola
In more than a dozen African countries, families cook a soup from the fruit of the same palm tree. The borders between those countries were drawn by people who had no idea what was in the pot on either side.
Around thirty countries
Around thirty African countries pound or stir a starchy staple and eat it with soup and stew, and the name changes at almost every border while the food does not: ugali in Kenya, nshima in Zambia, sadza in Zimbabwe, pap in South Africa, eba in Nigeria.
Senegal · Gambia · Ghana · Nigeria
Jollof takes its name from the old Jolof kingdom of Senegal and The Gambia, and it grew out of ceebu jen, which UNESCO listed in 2021. The argument about who cooks it best is an argument between cousins.
Once a year, one dish is built from ingredients and cooking drawn from all five African regions, North, West, Central, East and Southern, and served at African Food Network events. The 2026 dish was presented in London in October.
Different cultures. One table. One continent.
The people who speak in the film, with the titles their own name cards give them.
Ameyaw Debrah
Blogger
Jennifer Ibrahim
On Air Personality and PR Consultant, Cool FM Abuja
Hon. Cuthbert S. Ncube
Executive Chairman, African Tourism Board
Houcceem Bellakoud
Founder and Organiser, African Food Festival
Chef Amaka
CAPA President
Toluwalope Olanrewaju
Administrative Secretary, African Food Network
Chef T Stone
Chef
Kevin Eze
Founder and CEO, African Food Network
Dr. Maryam Habib
Public Health Nutrition and Food Systems Specialist
Three ways in, depending on who you are. Pick the one that is yours.
Cook one dish from another African country this month, then tell us what you made and how it went.
Put a Unity Dish on your menu for a week, or show the film to your customers one evening.
Talk to usHost a screening for your staff or your community, or join the campaign as a national partner.
Africa does about 15 per cent of its trade with itself, against nearer 70 per cent for Europe, and food has been crossing those same borders the whole time.
Write to usA poster, the synopsis, a screening guide, social assets and a one page fact sheet. Enough to run a screening in a university hall, a cultural centre or an embassy without having to ask us for anything.
We will write when there is something to say, not on a schedule.