The generative politics of a Ghanaian local food movement

Abstract

This paper examines a local food movement in Accra, Ghana, where chefs, entrepreneurs, and creatives are reimaging Ghanaian cuisine. Based on 6 months of participant observation and 12 semi-structured interviews, the paper examines the values, motivations, and imaginaries that animate this visible, urban and globally connected movement. It highlights how food becomes a medium for reclaiming space in global culinary narratives where African cuisines have long been marginalized. The movement embodies a politics of possibility, grounded in cultural pride and global ambition. By foregrounding growth, visibility, and world-making, this paper contributes to critical food geographies in the Global South. It argues that Ghana’s local food movement unsettles dominant understandings of localism by centering inclusivity rather than exclusion. In doing so, it invites a rethinking of food politics not as reactive, but as aspirational – driven by joy, ambition, and the desire to shape postcolonial futures through culinary creativity.

Introduction

A new alternative milk made from a locally grown tropical almond; a three-course dining experience featuring tigernuts, unassuming legumes grown across Ghana with an earthy milky flavor; a new café named after a traditional smelly fermented paste dawadawa that seeks to celebrate, not retire the funky local spice. These are examples of a new direction in the food scene in Accra, Ghana. This organically-formed movement is being advanced by chefs, food entrepreneurs, social media influencers and food writers who share the common goals of promoting local Ghanaian food to a broad, and often elite, audience.

To middle- and upper-class foodies in Accra, the growth of this movement is hard to miss, with new events, products and markets popping up across the city. A local chef and caterer with an Instagram following of over 6,000 describes his approach as: ‘Eat Local, in Season & Sustainably’. ¹ In the central neighborhood of Osu, a café menu’s tagline reads: ‘Celebrating local Ghanaian ingredients’. Ingredients are being used in new ways. A skincare company launched in 2017 bases all its products in edible oils, particularly local shea butter. The company’s Instagram tagline promotes ingredients sourced from Ghana: ‘RAW Handmade Skincare Sourced from the WILD of Ghana; so PURE YOU CAN EAT IT!’. ² Local food is certainly having a moment in the sun in Accra.

Accra is not alone in this. Over the past few decades, local food movements have reached the pitch of a near global fervor. While early scholarly work on local food focuses on cases in the Global North, a growing body of literature on local food in the Global South is gaining traction.^3–12 Scholars argue that there are key distinctions that set cases in the Global South apart, such as the incorporation of anti-colonial sentiments and themes of postcolonial hybridity. Furthermore, local food movements in the Global South are often analyzed through the lens of cosmopolitanism, as they have constituent elements from all over the world and emphasize fusion and mixing.^13,14

Contributing to this body of literature, I describe how the Ghanaian local food movement compares to others in the Global South. I find that what stands out about the movement is its earnestly generative politics. It wants to be known – to spread food and joy, to grow, to expand – and it wants to do so on its own terms. This orientation toward growth and visibility invokes a politics that draws on African epistemologies and engages in speculative reimagining of Ghana’s place within global culinary futures. Rather than defining itself by what it excludes, the Ghanaian movement defines itself through what it seeks to develop, advancing an ethos of inclusion, experimentation, and cultural pride. Members are not merely preserving heritage, they are actively constructing a cosmopolitan future in which Ghanaian cuisine claims a seat at the global table.

This paper proceeds by grounding this argument in the literature on local food, cosmopolitanism, and postcolonial studies. Then following the methods, I draw on case material from Accra’s food scene to show how the movement enacts a distinctly Ghanian yet globally oriented food politics. I highlight two ways that the movement does this: through its inclusivity and possibility, and through its ambition for global recognition. I conclude by emphasizing the political stakes of the movement’s self-definition.

Local food in the Global North

Local food movements first captured mainstream attention in North America and Europe in the 1990s and have continued to grow ever since. There are many compelling arguments to be made for the value of local food: it supports the local economy, it is fresh and seasonal, it can foster community relationships, and it can support environmental and human health. ¹⁵ There are numerous ways to define what local means, and debates around the definition consider the role of geographic proximity, place-based cultural significance, and the relevance of broader commodity chains.^16–19

Local food has always been political. Some see local food as a reaction to neoliberal ideologies, countering the arguably alienating and disempowering effects of globalizing food systems. ²⁰ Local food is elevated and celebrated as an alternative way of doing business, connecting with your local farmer, nourishing yourself and your community. On the other hand, many food scholars see local food movements as a product of neoliberal ideologies.^21,22 Local food movements have been characterized as advancing neoliberal discourses of ‘responsiblization’: responsibility that would otherwise be shouldered by structural or governmental bodies is instead pushed on the consumer, tasking individuals to ‘fix’ the food system through their economic choices.^23–25 Even when proponents of local food frame their work as responsive to structural systems of injustice, in practice, local food movements often remain centered around individualistic and market-oriented understandings of civic engagement, failing to address structural power imbalances.^26,27 Local food systems are critiqued as not actually alternative to conventional food systems, at worst reinforcing them and best occupying a particular niche within them. ²⁸ Considering these critiques, some movements double down on their social justice goals by supporting cooperatively owned local farms and distributors or adding educational components to local food events that teach about disparities in food access. ²⁹

Scholars have also critiqued localism as defensive in the sense it ‘can be based on a category of “otherness” that reduces the lens of who we care about’. ³⁰ This narrows the lens of what should be valued and excludes ‘other’ foods that don’t fit into a certain category. A defensive localism is based on an exclusionary ethos, a protection of something presumably homogenous and static. ³¹ In this line of critique, local is not an innocent term as it can house nativist sentiments and reactionary politics.^32–35 The local is seen as a ‘trap’, in the sense that it is a false standard by which to gauge sustainability or equity. ³⁶ Furthermore, when drawing from romantic or nostalgic ideas of an imagined agrarian past, it can lead to movements that are based on alternative standards of purity and perfection, which are vulnerable to corporate cooption. ³⁷ In response to defensive localism, DuPuis and Goodman ³⁸ call for a reflexive localism that takes into account ways that people’s notions of ‘right living’ and ‘right eating’ are wrapped up in race, class, and gender. Related, Hinrichs’ concept of a diversity-receptive localism is useful in this regard for the way that it ‘sees the local embedded within a larger national or world community, recognizing that the content and interests of “local” are relational and open to change’. ³⁹

Drawing on these perspectives, this paper contributes to conversations around the politics of what counts as local and why, focusing on the context of the Global South where the history of colonialism changes the calculus.

Local food in the Global South

Local food movements in the Global South tend to embrace food from both within and outside of national borders, which scholars have theorized as an articulation of postcolonial cosmopolitanism. ⁴⁰ Postcolonial cosmopolitanism works to realize the ideals that Europe initially pronounced but then failed to deliver to citizens/subjects of postcolonial states. It advances terms like ‘civilization’, ‘rights of man’, ‘reason’, and ‘liberty’ that seek to elevate an aspirational human society. ⁴¹ Theorizations of postcolonial cosmopolitanism are relevant to studies of local food in the Global South because colonialism brought about unprecedented opportunities for exchange of foods, ingredients, and cultures. As such, the process of colonialism has been linked with the birth of many hybrid national cuisines, from Asian noodles inspiring European pastas to New World tubers as the foundation of African staple dishes.^42,43

One way that the postcolonial cosmopolitanism of food has been described in the literature is through the framing of culinary cosmopolitanism. ⁴⁴ Subscribing to a kind of ‘omnivorousness’, this consumer embraces a wide diversity of genres. ⁴⁵ A culinary cosmopolitan embraces new and exotic ideas about food, while dismissing the old-fashioned snobbery of haute cuisine. For instance, they would celebrate a fusion street taco over a classical French dish. ⁴⁶ Though culinary cosmopolitanism aims to depart from gatekeeping ideas about good food, some scholars argue that it can also be elite in its own right. ⁴⁷ For instance, Ho ⁴⁸ contends that the framing of culinary omnivorousness doesn’t fully divorce itself from snobbishness because it flattens power differences. To embrace many genres is theoretically inclusive, but it fails to recognize how different ingredients and dishes still come with differential prices, access, and social meaning.

Another concept that is central to theorizations of local food in the Global South is hybridity. In this context, hybridity does not only refer to the mixing of different ingredients, but also to the mixing of ideas about food. For instance, in her study of local food movements in Taiwan, Lin ⁴⁹ finds that members integrate Buddhist and Western models. They believe that local food enables ethical consumption that fulfills the Chinese philosophy of peaceful human and nature relations, wherein culture and nature are not opposed, but continuous. Hybridity also allows for contradiction. For instance, in their study of Instagram food posts in the Philippines Yingchen et al. ⁵⁰ describe how users ‘code-switch’ between vocabularies of discipline and indulgence. This, they argue, is an example of a ‘localized response to the dysfunctional political truths of contemporary neoliberal existence’. ⁵¹ Similarly, Montefrio et al. ⁵² use assemblage theory to think about mixing in a multi-dimensional way, using a case study of local food in Manila, Philippines. Assemblage thinking is useful in this context because it focuses on the existence of multiple and multidimensional truths and does not seek to square them, embracing the awkward hybridity that develops. Montefrio et al. offer an example of this awkwardness: a restaurant in Manila advertises local food but also integrates popular imported ingredients.

This concept of awkward hybridity is integral to theorizing how local food in the Global South is not always geographically exclusionary. Afterall, cosmopolitan thought rejects a singular authentic artifact – ‘cultural purity is an oxymoron’– preferring to think in terms of hybrids and pluralities. ⁵³ This approach relieves some of the anxieties that shape conversations around authenticity in literatures on local food, which remain comparatively more tied to a defined geography. ⁵⁴ For instance, a study of local food in Hong Kong shows how young farmers and activists do not see globalization as threatening or hegemonic, but rather as a gateway to a diversity of thoughts and collaborators. ⁵⁵ In this case the value of local food is articulated not in its defensive resistance to the global but in its freshness, safety, uniqueness and generally healthy aura. Local food in the Global South is not necessarily oppositional to globalized food.

Perhaps because they resist opposing globalized food, movements in the Global South tend to be less binary in their politics (looking beyond the local ‘us’ vs the global ‘them’). For instance, they tend to be more attentive to flows of goods and knowledge, showing how power need not come from the West. Local and indigenous practice and knowledges can also be a source of power. ⁵⁶ Echoing this point a study in India found that Ayurvedic food advertised as uniquely Indian is actually often manufactured in the West. ⁵⁷ They posit that this indicates that globalization is not a unidirectional flow of money or ideas, and instead embrace a messiness.

This perceived messiness is in part due to the history of colonialism; postcolonial subjects have long navigated complexity and contradiction. Scholars of local food in the Global South have different ideas about how to address these contradictions, and moreover, the degree to which colonial histories shape contemporary movements. One perspective focuses on ways to elevate local and indigenous food while rejecting anything associated with colonial food. This perspective is alive in movements to decolonize diets. In these movements, cooks, scholars, and activists celebrate indigenous food traditions, often elevating so-called folk foods to a high-profile stage.^58–62 A parallel approach celebrates local food as source of nationalistic pride. For instance, the study of Ayurvedic diets in India finds that food is advertised using nationalistic rhetoric pitting it against the hegemony of Western food chains. ⁶³ Yet anti-colonial articulations are not necessarily consistent as entrepreneurs of Ayurvedic food still use global technologies and designs to promote their agendas; essentially using the tools of capitalist consumerism to critique it.

While food scholars agree that the history of colonialism plays a role in shaping contemporary foodscapes across the Global South, some argue that too much focus on colonialism is limiting. In her work on the food history of Ghana, Miller ⁶⁴ asserts that we need to move away from a scholarly focus on colonial legacies because it distracts our attention from the worthiness of pre-colonial foodways. Driven by a similar goal, Khalikova ⁶⁵ coined the term gastro-bilingualism to highlight how food cultures can speak two languages, without situating or qualifying those languages too much. The term need not be only about pre- and postcoloniality, it can also reference larger contexts of transformation (like contemporary nationalism or other global influences). Yet another take on the role of colonialism focuses on ways that parts of it are embraced in the Global South. Some argue that postcolonial subjects assert their equality by eating European foods.^66,67 In some postcolonial contexts adopting European foods, supermarkets, or chain restaurants can be seen as a desirable form of economic growth. ⁶⁸

I use these perspectives to theorize the contributions of the local food movement in Ghana. I find examples of culinary cosmopolitan omnivorousness that represent a hybridity reminiscent of many other movements.^69–71 I use theorizations of the politics of postcolonial framings of local food that seek to move away from binary divisions between the local and the global.^72,73 Embracing the messiness of postcolonial hybridity, I show how colonial influences are at times resisted, yet parts of them still embraced.^74–76 I focus my attention on the most prominent theme that emerges from the case of the Ghanaian local food movement: it’s generative politics that is expansive and future oriented. In this way, my analysis moves this body of literature closer to a future in which food movements in the Global South are defined in their own right, not in comparison to the West. My analysis is true to the spirit of the Ghanaian local food movement, focused not on resistance, nostalgia or exclusion, but rather on what can be done next.

Methods

I draw on and 12 semi-structured interviews with members of the Ghanaian local food movement and 6 months of participant observation in Accra, Ghana.

I interviewed chefs, bloggers, farmers, nutritionists, and entrepreneurs who see themselves as part of the collective movement to promote local Ghanaian food. Interviewees were initially selected via connections made through participant observation, and later with the aid of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called The Ghana Food Movement, which hosts events to promote innovations in Ghanaian food, and provides a publicly available list of participants online. Membership in this network was not a prerequisite for participation in the study. Interviewees generally identified as middle and upper class and were based in Accra. They were composed of 3 women and 9 men, all adults under the age of 50, mostly young professionals in their 30s. Eleven of the twelve were Ghanaian citizens, a few had dual citizenship, and nearly all had traveled, studied, or lived abroad. All had completed a college education, and a few had advanced degrees. Interviews were semi-structured, and audio recorded. Main themes addressed in the interviews centered around the following questions: What are the main factors that motivate your participation in the Ghanaian local food movement? What issues (generally and specifically) are you trying to solve? How does political consciousness factor into your work? Interviews and field notes were transcribed and inductively coded for themes.

At 12 interviews I reached theoretical saturation, as I was simultaneously learning about the movement by visiting sites and attending events. My participant observation included visiting the Green Butterfly weekend farmers market, attending a series of local dinners available to the public, and frequenting a network of locally branded restaurants and cafés. The Green Butterfly market is hosted in a central and upscale neighborhood in Accra, with a few dozen stands under the shade of a canopy of trees. Its vendors offer produce, prepared food, and crafts all manufactured in Ghana. The events I attended included organized dinner banquets featuring menus specifically crafted around locally sourced foods. The restaurants were branded for consumers looking for authentic local wares, as per their websites and social medial presence. Restaurants and dinners were social spaces where attendees tended to be there primarily because of their interest in local food. I did not pursue interviews with them because it was more natural to discuss their food interests and ethos in an informal way.

Transcripts of interviews and field notes were coded in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, with the support of a research assistant. First working in Word, I used an inductive approach to generate initial themes directly from the data, beginning with a close reading to identify recurring ideas. These preliminary themes were iteratively refined into a list of codes. I then coded the data using the comments function in Word. I copied the coded portions of the data into Microsoft Excel, with one sheet per code. Coding helped me identify not only the most frequently cited motivations and concerns among members, but also the underlying values and social imaginaries informing their engagement with the local food movement. The codes developed through this process structure the analysis presented in the findings.

The context of the local food scene in Accra

The Ghanaian local food movement is based in the capital city of Accra, a rapidly growing urban metropolis bordering the Atlantic coast. Historically, Accra was the trading port of the Dutch West India Company, which was later purchased by British. By the 19th century Accra was the capital of the British Gold Coast, up until Ghana’s independence in 1957. Material goods such as cocoa and gold put the port on the map as a key trade outpost. Since independence, Accra has remained a regional cultural and financial hub. Accra is a dynamic and expanding city: the population of Ghanaians living in cities has doubled since independence. ⁷⁷ With this rapid growth, Accra’s foodscape has changed as well. Across middle and upper-class neighborhoods supermarkets are easy to come by, processed foods proliferate across formal and informal markets, and fast-food chains like KFC have moved in. Popular media outlets have remarked on the ‘Westernization’ of Accra’s foodscapes, citing the social status now associated with fast food consumption. ⁷⁸ These changes have not erased the existence of Ghanaian foodways but have brought a new concentration of foreign and fast foods.^79,80

The most visible examples of the Ghanaian local food movement are grounded in a few sites throughout Accra – specialty weekend markets, restaurants, and dining events – where foodies congregate to, buy, sell, and exchange their wares. For instance, the Green Butterfly Market tagline is ‘. . . local artisan and innovative entrepreneurs making their own products locally. Shop local!’ ⁸¹ The market was founded in 2010 by a Ghanian entrepreneur Madame Yasmeen, who runs a soap business. According to her online blog, her vision was to create a space for local artisans to sell their wares, with a particular focus on women. After running a small market in a park for 2 years, the group caught the attention of the Goethe Institut, the international German culture center, and they formed a partnership. Since the beginning of the market, the directors insisted on vendors being residents, making local products, and emphasizing eco-friendliness. According to the blog, it was the first market in Ghana to ban the use of plastic bags. Selection criteria require that vendors grow or make their own products locally ‘on the African continent’, be residents of Ghana or another African country, and be a small to medium-sized business. On its website, the Green Butterfly Market advertises its ‘lifestyle brand in Ghana focusing on establishing and maintaining localized business cooperatives as means of empowering mostly women in our communities. We aim to spread eco-friendly culture in Ghana, and eventually to other parts of Africa’.

While the Green Butterfly Market may seem to suggest that local food is special in Accra, local food is not hard to find, practically speaking. On my way home from my visits to these local farmers markets, I would often stop at a separate open-air vegetable market to complete my food shopping. These open-air markets are ubiquitous throughout West Africa: large, high-density, high-volume, with sellers peddling their wares stacked on tarps on the ground, or on tables with umbrellas. Sections vary from fresh fruits and vegetables to used clothes, electronics, and bulk fabrics. Much of the food sold at these markets is local. Though the origin of products is not generally formally advertised, the locality of the food is exposed by the way that the markets follow agricultural rhythms. For example, piles of mangos or watermelons erupt during their respective seasons.

Another site of the local food movement in Accra is at restaurants and public hosted dinners organized by up-and-coming chefs. These spaces feature local ingredients that are often reworked in trendy culinary ways. One hosted dinner that exemplifies this format was called the ‘West African dining experience’ and it featured a three-course menu that incorporated a small local legume colloquially called a ‘tigernut’ in every course. Some of these are organized by the NGO, the Ghana Food Movement, which hosts events around Ghanaian food. ⁸² Launched a few years ago by a Dutch woman with a background in the food business, this NGO is now run by a nearly fully Ghanaian team and seeks to bring together foodies from a variety of backgrounds. Other events were independently organized. The restaurants visited had an online and social media presence and catered to middle- or upper-class patrons. For instance, one well-known restaurant’s website advertises ‘authentic and traditional recipes from the subregion’ and described itself as ‘especially for the middle-income business community and the discerning international traveler’. ⁸³ These restaurants and dinners attracted enthusiastic patrons drawn to the promise of local wares.

Inclusivity and possibility

One of the primary things that stood out about the Ghanaian local food movement was its members’ exuberant enthusiasm about the meaning and taste of their food. They consistently articulated a strong foundation dedicated to local community and pride. One entrepreneur who runs a local almond milk company set the stage with the comment:

There is also a growing consumer population for made-in-Ghana products, for example, there is a whole made-in-Ghana month. There is a lot of pride around that as well, you will often find that locally produced products have stated ‘product made in Ghana’ . . . (Food entrepreneur 1).

For members of the movement, authentically Ghanaian food can nourish a feeling of community and belonging. One chef saw Ghanaian food as an exciting new way to foster a feeling of community based on shared identity:

I get the sense it’s more about trying to belong, that kind of thing. It’s more like the exciting thing now. A lot of people are talking about turning to Ghanaian indigenous food (Chef 4).

This chef mentioned indigeneity, which came up in others interviews as well. It tended to be used loosely, interchanged with ideas like local and traditional. When I inquired about how people defined the term, they said things like: ‘At the end of the day, it is what is commonly used in a society or in a particular region. That’s what we call indigenous’ (Chef 3). According to this definition, indigenous need not be endemic to Ghana, and any food that has been absorbed into the culture counts.

This approach to indigeneity brings up an important theme that complicates the baseline commitment to Ghanaian pride: members celebrated foods that highlighted their Ghanaian roots while exercising the liberty to play with and reimagine them. A chef summarized this relationship between tradition and innovation:

The intent is to honor our roots . . . . It is basically to honor our roots and represent them in ways that are new. Cuisine influences are changing over time so we should just stay true to our roots but present it in a different way as time changes like to make it dynamic, to make it more presentable and appealing to the youth (Chef 2).

Paying homage to one’s roots was only half the project, as change and dynamism were also essential to this chef. These themes were reiterated among many members. By expanding the boundaries of who or what is considered local, the Ghanaian local food movement focuses on the things that bind: ‘things that are common across the board’ (Chef 3), or ‘something [that] has been able to permeate the culture of a group of people’ (Food entrepreneur 2). For instance, members frequently cited jollof rice as an authentic Ghanaian dish, while simultaneously acknowledging how multiple West African nations have long been vying for ‘ownership’ of it. ⁸⁴

Rather than maintaining boundaries around terms, advancing an openness was more important. This came up in a discussion with one of the chefs of the ‘West African dining experience’. When describing his choice to use sweet potato, a new world crop, in the main course of his dinner advertised specifically to promote local ingredients, he emphasized the following:

Well, the reason for choosing sweet potatoes, I don’t know if you have had one by the roadside, it is called atomo. This is the roasted sweet potato which is mostly served with pepper sauce and fish. But I just mash it. But like I said at the event, the [sweet] potatoes traveled from Benin to Togo and finally arrived in Ghana. So, what we used was not from Ghana. I still could have used yam or something else [from Ghana] but was just trying something different. That’s what I’m trying to do. It doesn’t really matter what, I still could use yams as well. It wasn’t necessarily a replacement I just wanted to highlight that sweet potato. I don’t know, do you like the taste of that sweet potato? (Chef 3)

The sweet potatoes were neither grown in Ghana, nor endemic to Ghana. Their geographic origins were not as important as the contemporary meaning that the ingredient had today, shaped by its use in street food. This chef emphasized that ‘it doesn’t really matter what’ one chooses to cook, rather it was about the way the sweet potato or tasted, and the atomo street food that it invoked. What was important to him was elevating a shared affinity for a delicious roadside snack, and what it meant to celebrate this in a restaurant setting. This perspective resonated with many of the attendees, who expressed similar sentiments. For instance, dessert at the same event was adorned with crunchy bits of nkate cake, a cheap peanut brittle available at corner stores or sold by wandering salespeople. Attendees commented on how pleased they were to be eating such seemingly homely street food in a fancy new form.

When asked what main issue they were trying to address in their work, members did not frame ‘other food’ (be it foreign food, imported food, or processed food) as the main problem. They wanted to encourage more people know about the richness of Ghanaian food, but they did not wish to oppose the forces that may have limited these privileges in the first place. Only rarely did members critique Western influences.

The Ghanaian local food movement’s non-oppositional approach could be critiqued as un-reflexive. ⁸⁵ The movement’s sweeping inclusivity at times seemingly fails to exclude the very hegemonic foods that could be read as problematic. But also, the loose boundaries around the local indicate that, rather than attempting to accurately reproduce the arguably tired politics of local food in the Global North, the Ghanaian local food movement crafts a much more generative politics. The movement avoids blindly valorizing exclusionary spaces, places, or lifestyles like other local movements have been critiqued for doing. ⁸⁶

This approach implicates a resistance to colonial divisions, which is articulated in a few ways. For one, the Ghanaian local food movement advances an anti-colonial politics by its commitment indigeneity – as defined by its members, referring to food that has earned a special meaning to a culture. This has been documented in other cases across the Global South. In some cases, a conventional understanding of indigeneity is celebrated through the elevation of indigenous species. ⁸⁷ Other contexts appreciate the specialness of food that produced in a way that is meaningful to an indigenous culture. ⁸⁸

Second, the Ghanaian local food movement rejects colonial binarism by dismissing division and advancing openness around what counts as local food. There was a time when Europeans intentionally separated their cuisine because they saw their food as superior and unsuitable for Ghanaians. ⁸⁹ When the Ghanaian local food movement uses ingredients inclusively, this can be read as a rejection of this history of exclusion. This is also documented in other postcolonial cuisines where eating European foods can be a form of asserting equality with the colonizers. ⁹⁰

These loose boundaries have been characterized in other contexts as ‘awkward’ or messy hybridity, highlighting contradictions that inevitably arise when pre- and postcolonial epistemologies mix. ⁹¹ The Ghanaian chef’s use of sweet potato (a new world crop) mirrors the way that locally branded restaurants in Manila incorporated trendy imported ingredients. ⁹² More broadly, the way several Ghanaian chefs celebrated their local food without excluding ingredients introduced through globalized foodways, is reminiscent of a case in South India where consumers criticized imported chicken, but not the processes of globalization that put it on the market. ⁹³ The ways that members of the Ghanaian local food movement conceptually reject binary divisions between local and foreign food is reminiscent of the ‘code-switching’ ⁹⁴ seen in other cases, where postcolonial subjects don’t try to hold themselves to a singular reality. By these measures, aspects of the Ghanaian local food movement are certainly also awkward and messy.

But overwhelmingly, members did not seem to care if their approach appeared to be messy. The focus was clearly fixed ahead, on what they were building. Following their lead, I orient my analysis toward these articulations. Because members of the Ghanaian local food movement don’t seem concerned about setting themselves apart from what they are not, it makes more space for them to define what they are. The following section details what members of the movement aim to create, articulated in they ways they seek to elevate Ghanaian food.

Ambitions for a politics of elevated Ghanaian food

Members in the Ghanaian local food movement challenged the oppositional relationship of the local and the global, celebrating local food without pushing back against imported food. This impulse went beyond a spirit of inclusion; it implicated an ambitious vision for Ghanaian cuisine that is competitive at an international level. When I asked one chef about how the globalization of diets related to the movement for local Ghanaian food, he corrected my framing. I had framed Ghana as the recipient of globalization, but he framed Ghana also as a globalizing force, calling it ‘two-way’. He used the example of the popularity of Jamaican food to explain his vision for Ghana:

That’s the way forward. You know. Jamaicans are not that much in terms of population, I think the Ghanaian population is more than Jamaican. But Jamaican influence over the world is great. Their food is everywhere. Go anywhere and if you want Jamaican food, rice and peas, anywhere you might be able to find it, a Jamaican who has moved there. And that’s good for Jamaica. They are spreading their culture the same way the West has also spread their culture. The same two-way. (Chef 3)

For him, the two-way exchange refers to the way that Ghana can receive other foods, while also spreading its own dishes outwards. Rather than opposing local food to foreign foods, members of the movement sought to bring their dishes to the same international stage. A common sentiment was articulated by one chef and entrepreneur: ‘I wish that Ghanaian food is ready to move to the international stage’ (Chef 5). The elevation of local cuisine was explicit, many members wanted to see their foods in high class establishments. The same chef described how he took a popular dish waakye – a smoky rice and beans with spiced toppings – and fashioned it into a cocktail dish: ‘So if you want to take the Ghanaian food from where it is to the international level, we have to change a lot, for instance how it’s served, how fast’ (Chef 5). Elevated was often synonymous with international. One chef described his philosophy:

The rest of the world has shown us what they have. What about us? We have to show them what we have. I think the best way to do that is through Afrofusion, to try and create a bridge between the two delicacies, so the people can actually understand what you are about. (Chef 4)

He added a hopeful note ‘definitely, we are going to have Michelin star food, Ghanaian food . . . that’s purely Afrofusion or maybe Ghanaian fusion and stuff like that. Definitely, I’m hopeful’ (Chef 4). This chef was not shy to express his hopeful ambition about Ghanian food’s role in internationally ranked restaurants.

Members were unapologetic in their attempts to reframe local food as elite. Examples were evident at the Green Butterfly Market where stands boasted specialty items like fresh juices with trendy flavor combinations, boutique coffee roasters, and pricey potted herbs. Patrons at the market seemed to be there for the social experience: to chat, to exchange, to be seen. This elitism wasn’t lost on vendors, who expressed a matter-of-fact self-awareness about price.

Some mused about how to make local food more like Western and fast foods. One chef made a comparison between Western fast-food chains and local eateries called chop bars. He said that the Western food chains, such as KFC, were clean, comfortable, and spacious, whereas local food joints were unhygienic, uncomfortable, and small. He said that to elevate Ghanaian food there was a need to change the food and the environment in which it was produced. Another chef added:

You know Ghanaians love their food, but how do we make it more fancy, attractive, you know, to enjoy. I’m telling you, there are a lot of good tasting foods being sold just behind the drain in the streets of Accra. The food tastes very good, but you might not buy it because of the environment, the lady selling the food, everything about it. But if you are able to take the same lady, clean her up a little bit, train her a little bit, put her in an environment like the KFC market, her food will work . . . same food, same lady, her food will work. (Chef 5)

The Ghanaian local food movement’s desire to elevate its local cuisine to a cosmopolitan international stage offers an alternative vision of what local food can or should accomplish. Local food becomes a tool to define new frontiers rather than boundaries. When Ghanaian cuisine aspires to have a seat at the table of international cuisine – the table from which it has been historically been denied an invitation – it advances a postcolonial cosmopolitan politics of ‘world citizenship’. ⁹⁵ In the postcolonial context of Ghana, participation in an elite movement represents an act of resistance against the historical marginalization of its local food.

This embrace of generative futurity is not unique to Ghana. Across the postcolonial world, similar dynamics emerge in movements that resist being framed only through loss or resistance. In other cases, movements seek to make their food globally recognizable, ⁹⁶ participate in global movements like ‘slow’ or ‘low carbon’ food, ⁹⁷ or to put a ‘taste of our own’ on the map. ⁹⁸ Seen together, these movements represent different ways of imagining the future and merits of local food in the Global South. In conversations around other food movements in the Global South, sometimes this future orientation can be under emphasized because of efforts to situate them in the context of local food projects that preceded them in the Global North. Framing localism for its generative politics is not just hopeful, it is political in the sense that it moves the dial away from fixation on messiness or awkwardness, which inherently imply comparison to the West. ⁹⁹

Conclusion

The Ghanaian local food movement offers a compelling framing of what localism can mean in postcolonial contexts. Rather than centering exclusion, resistance or nostalgia, the movement embodies a generative politics – one that is expansive, future-oriented, and rooted in a distinctly Ghanaian worldview. The movement’s inclusivity rejects legacies of colonial divisions, and the resultant food fusions rewrite the ‘rules’ of localism. Rather than adhering to conventional boundaries around what constitutes local food, the movement is about what it means to advance the foods that have cultural meaning in Ghana. Food becomes a medium for reclaiming space on global stages where African cuisines have historically been marginalized.

It is important to note that my study is limited by my engagement with this one set of actors in Accra: there are surely other articulations of local food throughout the city and country that are also worthy of analysis. My study captures a version of the movement that is particularly loud and ambitious, which makes for an interesting case study, but does not leave much space for analysis of other articulations (like in rural areas or among farmers). Future research would benefit from exploring how other articulations of local food around Ghana square with the movement that I have characterized.

Overall, by foregrounding the movement’s orientation toward growth, visibility, and inclusion, this paper contributes to emerging scholarship on food movements in the Global South that emphasizes futurity over fidelity, aspiration over authenticity. Ghana’s generative localism invites a shift in food studies: from cataloging what these movements are reacting against, to exploring what they are working to build. It also challenges scholars to rethink what food politics can look like when they are not organized around loss opposition or lack, but around world-making, ambition and joy.