The jollof wars: On UNESCO’s ‘abitration’ and the heritage potential of garau-garau

The snowball that has been the jollof rice debate reached dizzying dimensions this week when reports spread that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had proclaimed the Senegalese variant as the one true one.   With one sweeping gesture, it would seem, UNESCO had effectively swatted aside the keen contestation between Nigeria and […]

The snowball that has been the jollof rice debate reached dizzying dimensions this week when reports spread that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had proclaimed the Senegalese variant as the one true one.  

With one sweeping gesture, it would seem, UNESCO had effectively swatted aside the keen contestation between Nigeria and Ghana over whose jollof is the best.  

This tussle for jollof supremacy has seen the always feisty football encounters between Nigeria and Ghana being renamed “the Jollof Derby.” I like it. It is swanky, playful and original. 

Regarding the so-called proclamation, my initial reaction is to ask who invited UNESCO into this debate. What was their business with it and why didn’t Nigeria and Ghana properly document the history and evolution of their jollof rice and had to wait for UNESCO to come and tell them that the food they prepare and garnish in various local flavours—some spicier, or rather more peppery, than others— is to some extent inauthentic. You know, the typical knee-jerk reaction. Many Nigerians got excited about this and went to social media to write long epistles about what jollof rice, not only as a cuisine but as a cultural marker means to them as opposed to the UNESCO proclamation that means nothing to them. As did the Ghanaians. The Senegalese must have been having their conversation in French. It was all patriotic, sweet and quite funny. It was also a storm in a teacup.

The jollof wars: On UNESCO’s ‘abitration’ and the heritage potential of garau-garau

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Firstly, and this is the least important, there is the fact that I don’t care much for jollof rice, which I think is overrated in any case (and I have eaten jollof rice in both Ghana and Nigeria—although one of my Ghanaian friend’s protests that what I had wasn’t the real Ghana jollof. The Senegalese one I had didn’t knock my socks off as well.) I think the quality of every single jollof meal comes down to the skill of the cook.  

Regardless, some people love it genuinely, while others will defend it to the death not because they love it that much but because winning the argument is a matter of national pride. To these patriots, I would say: stay the cause. 

 In dismissing this alleged intervention by UNESCO, the major issue is that the proclamation, as reported, does not exist. It is disinformation. Fake News. A half-cooked jollof mischief conjured up by someone with questionable motives. 

In a simple Google search, the news story of this proclamation popped up on several news sites, none of them reliable or well known, except perhaps for the online site of Tribune newspaper, which rehashed what it picked up from these blogs.  

The second questionable point was that all the stories were similar. They had the same structure and the same diction and only varied in a few tonal flavours. Some attempted to inject humour and lightness—mostly in the first and last paragraphs, but the core of the story was always the same. They all mentioned that UNESCO recognised Senegalese jollof or Ceebu Jen, as it is known, as the most authentic and has recorded it as an intangible cultural heritage, ending the debate between Nigeria and Ghana. The biggest red flag here, however, is that none of these reports directly quoted UNESCO or any of its representatives. All of the reports made mention of a story published by The Conversation.com, titled ‘Who invented jollof rice? Senegal beats Ghana and Nigeria to the title’ by Fatima Fall Niang, whose book traces the origin of jollof to Senegal circa 1860 and 1940 when French colonisers “Replaced existing food crops with broken rice imported from Indochina.” 

There is a need to scrutinise these claims from two points of intervention. First, on the point of dates, rice and its cultivation on the continent and in West Africa in particular, predates colonial intervention. Some scholars claim that it might have gone as far back as 3000 years. But most definitively, African-American scholar, Edda L. Fields-Black in her book Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora, recounts a stranded slaver, Samuel Gamble, as far back as 1793 documenting sophisticated irrigated rice farming in West Africa. Before that, the famous traveller, Leo Africanus, documented rice cultivation in Sokoto in the 1500s.

Secondly, on closer scrutiny, however, one finds UNESCO’s listing of the Senegalese variant, Ceebu Jen, as an intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The irony is that the listing is from 2021, which raises the question of why is it blowing up now. And how did that translate to dismissing the Nigerian and Ghanaian variants? 

 Also, neither the reports published by Theconversation.com, (apart from the headline) nor on UNESCO’s intangible heritage site refers to the Nigerian or Ghanaian variant. 

The article in Theconversation.com, authored by Ms Niang, who is also the director of research and documentation of Senegal at the Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal, only referenced Ghana and Nigeria in the headline but did not reference the history of their jollof variants as a comparative tool to establish the Senegalese variant as the original historically. Culinary-wise, I suppose we will never agree on which variant tastes better as each jollof, depending on the chef, the mix, the circumstances around the cooking and the person eating it tastes better. And please, I am not including the pepper-filled stuff you find in places like Lagos. 

In any case, what I find most interesting about jollof is the naming. The report by theconversation.com makes a big deal of claiming that the word Jollof comes from an ancient Senegalese empire from the 12th century, long before the food was reportedly invented. But then again French fries are not originally from France even if the name suggests so. Speaking of the name of the dish, the Hausa name is not a fancy one but a practical one. It is called dafa duka— which simply translates as “cook it all.” But contextually it means “mix it all up” because instead of steaming the rice and topping it with tomato sauce or stew, all the ingredients, condiments and spices are thrown into the pot along with the rice and cooked, all mixed up to achieve unity. 

Practical, yes. It is something that could apply to people, in a diverse country like Nigeria. Dafa duka. Bring all the peoples, all the tribes and ethnicities, all the religions and regional idiosyncrasies, pour them in a pot and cook them up. Like various spices and condiments, each one brings something unique to the meal—a taste, a zing, some substance and flavour and together they unify into a dish that has got a whole continent talking. Dafa duka, a veritable philosophy for integration. It could be a philosophy and mantra for national unity if we could get the various entities in Nigeria to blend under the heat of being cooked by the oppression and exploitation of our various governments, dictators and politicians and the exploitation of foreign interests. Wouldn’t that get tongues wagging? 

As a matter of preference, I am more curious about garau-garau, that meal of steamed rice served with a dash of oil with minced onion, a sprinkle of spicy, feisty yaji and extra seasoning and in some instances with a side of vegetables. Tastier than the overrated jollof and as local as Dutsen Dala, I guess. Perhaps we should try to have this entered into UNESCO’s intangible heritage list and have some peace to feast.