Fonio, The Answer to Food Security in West Africa and The Sahel

Author: Pauline Kuranchie

June 16, 2026

Chef Fatmata Binta with a bowl of fonio [Image credit: Forbes / APAG Studios]

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), nearly 42 million people across West Africa and the Sahel are facing acute food insecurity. As the lean season (a period of food scarcity) begins this month and ends in August, this number could rise to 53 million.¹ Fonio, an indigenous, fast-maturing, and drought-tolerant grain, is one of the answers to the food and nutrition crisis in this region. Chef Fatmata Binta, a self-described nomadic chef and ambassador of Fulani cuisine, is at the forefront of preserving and promoting this nutritious grain. 

Searching for Fonio 

Chef Alisa Reynolds in a promotional poster for “Searching for Soul Food” [Image credit: Hulu]

 “Searching For Soul Food” is a travel series on Hulu that follows celebrity Chef Alisa Reynolds as she travels around the world to learn about food that has been passed down from generation to generation, as well as the stories and cultural traditions behind each meal. Throughout the series, Chef Reynolds explores the culinary worlds of Mississippi, Oklahoma, Appalachia, South Africa, Italy, Jamaica, Peru, and her birthplace of Los Angeles.²

In Episode two, Chef Reynolds visits Oklahoma to learn how Indigenous Americans are restoring their sovereignty through food.³ Before watching this episode, I had little knowledge of Indigenous food or the sheer level of commitment and ingenuity to preserving their food traditions and cooking techniques. Chef Reynolds shares a meal with Nico Albert, a chef and educator from the Cherokee Nation, and Amos Dailey and his family, who are members of the Osage Nation. As they eat hominy stew, Dailey explains that the Osage red corn used in the stew was believed to be extinct for almost 100 years. However, some members had a handful of seeds and started cultivating them, and passed down their knowledge through their families. For the Osage Nation and other Indigenous American communities, corn represents their strong, deep-rooted connection to their land and ancestors. All the way in West Africa, it is fonio (among other crops) that represents this connection for many Indigenous West African groups, including the Fulani people. Chef Fatmata Binta, a self-described nomadic chef and ambassador of Fulani cuisine, is at the forefront of preserving and promoting this ancient, nutritious grain.  

What is Fonio?

A close-up of fonio seeds ready for harvest [Image credit: Crop Trust / Michael Major]

Fonio is a type of millet in the genus Digitaria. Generally,  “millet” refers to a diverse group of small-grained dryland cereals, including pearl, proso, foxtail, and teff.⁴ Fonio is a staple crop for millions of people across West Africa and has been cultivated for more than 7,000 years. There are two main types — white fonio (Digitaria exilis) and black fonio (Digitaria iburia).⁵ White fonio is the most common variety, and it is primarily grown in Guinea, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau.⁶ Black fonio is similar to white fonio, but produces a smaller grain. Its cultivation is restricted to Nigeria and the northern regions of Togo and Benin.⁷ Fonio is also grown minimally in the Dominican Republic.⁸ Fonio is gluten-free and has a low glycemic index. Both varieties are highly nutritious and an excellent source of potassium, folate, magnesium, phosphorus, and zinc. Fonio seed is also rich in methionine and cystine, amino acids vital to human health and deficient in today's major cereals like wheat, rice, and maize.⁹

Fonio, like most millets, are climate resistant crops.¹⁰ It can grow in marginal and depleted soil conditions, adapted to the desertified and sandy soils of the Sahel region.¹¹ They are one of the world's fastest maturing cereals, producing grain just 6 or 8 weeks after they are planted.¹² As a result, fonio can be used as an adaptive crop for ensuring food security and nutrition across West Africa and the Sahel. Fonio also presents an opportunity for a strong network of partnerships between researchers, farmers, Indigenous communities, and policymakers to further share knowledge about growing, processing, storing, and marketing the grains to a wider audience.¹³ Despite its rise in popularity and its great potential as a crop for future needs, fonio lacks extensive study compared to the majority of cereal crops, and more agronomic and technological development is needed.¹⁴ Fonio production is still done by hand, primarily by women who grow it on their individual plots. Fonio remains time-consuming and labour-intensive due to the lack of proper harvesting, threshing, and processing machines for small to medium-scale producers.¹⁵ Chef Binta’s Fulani Kitchen Foundation (explained in detail in the next section) is a shining example of what can be achieved through thoughtful collaboration between women producers, government agencies, and development organizations.  

Fonio is a prized and sacred crop and holds an important place in many West African cultural traditions. For instance, amongst the Fulani in Guinea, it is part of the dowry payment.¹⁶ Guinea's Fouta Djallon region is considered the heart of the fonio belt in the Sahel region of West Africa.¹⁷ The Fulani people in this region have had a long tradition of growing fonio for subsistence. The Fulani people, also referred to as Fula, Fulbe, or Peul, are among the largest ethnic groups on the entire African continent. They are also considered the world’s largest nomadic ethnic group. Fulani people are predominantly Muslim and have historically been associated with cattle herding and livestock rearing.¹⁸ A majority of Fulani groups are concentrated principally in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Chad, and Niger, but they can also be found in several other countries.¹⁹ They are an ethnic minority in almost every country in which they reside, except Guinea, where they make up the largest ethnic majority at 33% of the population.²⁰ The Fulani represent an incredibly diverse and widespread group of people spanning across west, central, and parts of east Africa.²¹ As a result, generalizations are not very useful. Even estimates of the Fulani population (between five million and 65 million) are unclear, in part because there is little consensus regarding the definition and boundaries of Fulani ethnicity.²²

Traditionally, Fulani food is mostly prepared using ingredients that are sundried and can be preserved for months, since they are nomadic and move frequently. Their diet is mainly derived from cattle and includes dairy items like yogurt, milk, butter, and meat. Peanuts, corn, rice, as well as millets such as sorghum and fonio, round out the Fulani diet. There is a big misconception that the Fulani diet is meat-heavy because they rear cattle and livestock, but this is done mostly for business purposes.²³ With French colonization came the destruction of food systems among the Fulani in Guinea and other territories in West Africa. French colonizers fought the popularity of fonio, labeling it peasant food and enforcing the cultivation of monocultures for export and the import of foreign cereals.²³ Although it remains a staple crop for millions on the continent, it is still mostly concentrated in rural areas. Fortunately, fonio is now gaining worldwide attention as an important food source because more and more people in West Africa are questioning the foods they consume and are paying attention to the environmental consequences of their food choices.²⁵ Between 1994 and 2020, the production of fonio more than tripled (see fig 10 below). It is important to note, however, that many fonio growers are subsistence farmers and grow it mainly for their own consumption.²⁶ Fonio is also gaining popularity because of entrepreneurial African chefs like Chef Fatmata Binta, who integrate it into modern recipes such as fonio jollof, fonio porridge, and fonio salad.²⁷ Chef Binta’s work is dedicated to preserving Fulani cuisine and promoting fonio to the world. She believes it is one of the solutions for hunger, climate change, and empowering women producers in West Africa. 

[Image credit: FAO / FAOSTAT]

Chef Binta: Fonio Ambassador

Chef Binta (far right) training women producers in Northern Ghana on how to use a fonio processing machine [Image credit: FAO / Fanjan Combrink]

Chef Fatmata Binta is an award-winning chef, founder of the Fulani Kitchen Foundation, and FAO Regional Goodwill Ambassador for Africa.²⁸ She was born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to first-generation Guinean parents of Fulani descent. She is currently based in Accra, Ghana, where she has lived for over nine years.²⁹ In 2022, Chef Binta made history as the first African chef to win the Basque Culinary World Prize because of her work to promote Fulani cuisine, including fonio, through her signature initiative called Dine on a Mat.³⁰ It is a nomadic pop dining experience that immerses guests in Fulani culture through communal seating, storytelling, and ancestral ingredients such as fonio, baobab, and African locust bean.³¹ These dinners combine Chef Binta’s nomadic Fulani roots and formal training at the Kenyan Culinary Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.³² Hosted across three continents, Dine on a Mat has become a global celebration of Fulani traditions and values, honoring simplicity, community, and connection through food.³³

Dine on a Mat also directly supports the Fulani Kitchen Foundation, launched by Chef Binta in 2020 to empower women in rural West Africa through access to resources, training, and tools for scaling.³⁴ Fulani Kitchen now supports over 300 families, empowering women with education, skills training, and income-generating enterprises.³⁵ Through the Fulani Kitchen Foundation, Chef Binta has partnered with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Government of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture to bolster food security and enhance the resilience of agrifood systems in Ghana. This project trains women fonio farmers on good agricultural practices to address the challenges of low yields and the labour-intensive nature of traditional fonio production methods.³⁶

From Oklahoma to West Africa, Indigenous communities all around the world have been sustaining and preserving their food traditions and cultivating “forgotten crops” like Osage red corn and fonio for posterity. This continued commitment, despite violent displacement and destruction of their food systems, speaks to their resiliency and ingenuity as food engineers and the robust nature of their knowledge systems.³⁷ 

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Glossary

• African locust bean: The African locust bean tree (Parkia biglobosa) is a large, deciduous tree that grows across West/Central Africa. The pods (locust beans) of the tree are filled with seeds, which are fermented and made into strong aromatic cakes sold as a food flavoring called dawadawa. Dawadawa is often used in the preparation of soups and stews.  

• Agrifood systems: Agrifood systems are all the interconnected activities and actors involved in getting food from field to fork. It encompasses everything from agricultural production and processing to distribution, consumption, and waste management.

• Baobab: Baobab (Adansonia digitata) is the largest tree species of the genus Adansonia. Native to the African savannah, where the climate is extremely dry and arid, it is a symbol of life and positivity. It is a multi-purpose tree; its fruit pulp, seeds, leaves, flowers, roots, and bark are used locally for human consumption.

• Cherokee Nation: Cherokee Nation is the sovereign government of the Cherokee people, a Native American tribe originally located in the southeastern United States. They are the largest of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes and are based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation.

• Climate change: Climate change refers to the long-term changes in the Earth’s climate that are warming the atmosphere, ocean, and land. Climate change is affecting the balance of ecosystems that support life and biodiversity, and impacting health. It also causes more extreme weather events, such as more intense and/or frequent hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and droughts, and leads to sea level rise and coastal erosion as a result of ocean warming, melting of glaciers, and loss of ice sheets.

• Climate-resistant (or climate resilient) crops: Crops bred to withstand climate change impacts, ensuring food production in harsh conditions.

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger.

• Food security: Food security exists when people have access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development, and an active and healthy life. The opposite of this is referred to as food insecurity.

• Food systems: Food systems are the networks needed to produce and transform food, and ensure it reaches consumers.

• Forgotten crops (also referred to as underutilized crops, lost crops, or neglected crops): Crops that are neglected in agricultural research and development and underutilized in cultivation and marketing.

• Foxtail millet: A type of millet that is primarily grown in China, India, Korea, Afghanistan, Japan, and Georgia. Foxtail millet is high in thiamin, magnesium, and phosphorus. It is a source of iron, niacin, Vitamin B6, and zinc.

• Genus: In biology, a genus is a taxonomic rank that is higher than species but lower than family. It is an important category in the classification of living organisms. Each organism is named using a binomial nomenclature system, which includes two parts: the genus name and the species name. For example, the genus name of white fonio is Digitaria, and the species name is exilis.

• Glycemic index: The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of how quickly a food causes our blood sugar levels to rise after eating, based on a scale of 0 to 100

• Osage Nation: The Osage Nation, headquartered in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is a federally recognized Native American government. Before the existence of the United States, they controlled millions of acres in what is now known as Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

• Pearl millet: A type of millet that is primarily grown in sub-Saharan Africa. Pearl millet is high in iron, magnesium, selenium, and zinc. It is also a source of thiamin and vitamin B6.

• Proso millet: Proso millet is mainly cultivated in China, India,  Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, and the USA. It is high in thiamin, magnesium, zinc, and is a source of iron, selenium, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamin B6.

• The Sahel: The Sahel is a semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to Sudan.

• Sorghum: A type of millet produced mostly in Nigeria, the USA, and Sudan. Sorghum is high in copper, phosphorus, and selenium, and is a source of iron, zinc, pantothenic acid, and vitamin B6.

• Soul Food: Soul food is an ethnic cuisine traditionally prepared and eaten by African-Americans in the Southern United States.

• Sovereignty: In the context of food, sovereignty is the right of communities to shape their own food systems

• Teff: Originally from Ethiopia, teff is a millet primarily grown in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where it is a major staple crop. It is high in thiamin, vitamin B6, magnesium, phosphorus, and is a source of riboflavin, niacin, and pantothenic acid.

• Threshing: Threshing is the process of separating the grain from the straw. It can be done by hand, by using a treadle thresher, or mechanized.

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Footnotes

1. Ibrahima Diallo and Koffy Dominique Kouacou, “West Africa and the Sahel,”  FAO Regional Office for Africa, January 27th, 2026, https://www.fao.org/africa/news-stories/news-detail/west-africa-and-the-sahel--nearly-52.8-million-people-could-face-acute-food-insecurity-during-the-2026-lean-season-(june-august)/en

2.  “Searching for Soul Food,” Hulu Press, accessed May 12, 2026,  https://press.hulu.com/shows/searching-for-soul-food/.

3. Searching For Soul Food, season 1, episode 2, “Oklahoma,” directed by Rodney Lucas, featuring Alisa Reynolds, Nico Albert, and Amos Dailey, aired June 2nd, 2023, on Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/series/8dff9ac3-6725-4a75-a618-5e379fdcca65.

4. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets  (Rome: United Nations, December 6th, 2023): 1, https://doi.org/10.4060/cc7484en. 

5. “Fonio and the Reawakened 25,” The Lexicon of Food, accessed May 16th, 2026, https://lexiconoffood.com/2023/01/25/fonio/.

6. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets, 5

7.  National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I: Grains, (Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, February 28th, 1996): 60, https://doi.org/10.17226/2305.

8. “Fonio and the Reawakened 25” 

9. National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I: Grains, 60.

10. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets, 13.

11. “Fonio and the Reawakened 25” 

12.  National Research Council, Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I: Grains, 60

13. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets, xxiii

14. “Fonio and the Reawakened 25.” 

15. Ibid.

16. Afia Amoako, “Fonio - The Seed of the Universe” No Plantains Left Behind, February 10th, 2025, https://eatwithafia.substack.com/p/fonio-the-seed-of-the-universe. 

17. “The Seeds of a Positive Partnership,” Terra Ingredients, accessed May 20th, 2026, https://www.terraingredients.com/fonio/in-the-community/. 

18.  United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Legislative Factsheet: Fulani Communities in West and Central Africa (Washington D.C., September 2020): 1, https://www.uscirf.gov/publications/factsheet-fulani-communities-west-and-central-africa.

19.  "Fulani," Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed May 22, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fulani. 

20. “Guinea,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed May 22nd, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/place/Guinea. 

21. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Legislative Factsheet: Fulani Communities in West and Central Africa, 4.

22.  Ibid., 2.

23. Stephen Satterfield, host, Point of Origin, season 3, episode 22, “Fulani Foodways with Chef Binta,” iHeartPodcasts and Whetstone Media, September 30th, 2020, 39 min., 43 sec., https://open.spotify.com/show/4yvqe6J105w5AmafNeo6iJ.

24.  “Fonio and the Reawakened 25.” 

25. Esther Ama Asante, “The Fonio Women,” The Lexicon of Food, accessed May 22nd, 2026, https://lexiconoffood.com/agrobiodiversity/stories/fonio. 

26. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets, 36

27.  Ibid., 31.

28. “Chef Fatmata Binta: Redefining African Gastronomy,” Dine on a Mat, accessed May 23rd, 2026, https://dineonamat.com/fatmata-binta/.  

29. Satterfield, “Fulani Foodways with Chef Binta,” at 1:31-3:08.

30. George Koranteng and Zoie Jones, “FAO and Chef Binta empower women fonio farmers in Ghana,” FAO Regional Office for Africa, July 10th, 2024, https://www.fao.org/africa/news-stories/news-detail/fao-and-chef-binta-empower-women-fonio-farmers-in-ghana/en.

31. “Chef Fatmata Binta: Redefining African Gastronomy.” 

32. Satterfield, “Fulani Foodways with Chef Binta,”at 5:00-09.

33. “Chef Fatmata Binta: Redefining African Gastronomy.” 

34. “Fatmata Binta,” Charleston Wine + Food, accessed May 22nd, 2026, https://chswf.org/participants/fatmata-binta/.

35. “Chef Fatmata Binta: Redefining African Gastronomy.” 

36.  Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Unleashing the potential of millets – International Year of Millets, 11.