There is much made of various chefs’ missions to instigate change in the food system to change the way we eat, and indeed we are all familiar with celebrity chefs, who spend so much time on media duty or enlarging their culinary empires that it is hard to actually imagine them on the ground working with and empowering the communities they profess to be working for. Then there is Fatmata Binta, the Fulani chef, based in Ghana, who is doing work that has a significant impact at local and global levels.

The chef, who hails from the nomadic Fulani tribe in Sierra Leone, was the recipient of the prestigious 2022 Basque Culinary World Prize and is on a mission to preserve her tribe’s culinary culture, empower women and girls in local communities and promote the use of the ancient grain fonio as a disease- and drought-resistant, gluten-free alternative to rice and wheat.

Originally scheduled to meet for an interview at Identitá Golose in Milan, when Binta arrives, she has unfortunately lost her voice. We postpone and conduct the interview via video call from Accra in Ghana, where she is based. Trying to pin her down is a challenge as she is flat-out, working with her foundation, getting it more structured.

“It has been hectic,” she says. “It’s a lot of logistics and a lot of organisation because I still live in the city and the project is in the north of Ghana. It’s a lot.”

It’s tempting to say “be careful what you wish for,” and Binta throws her head back in laughter, “I know!” she says.

Things have changed a lot for her since she won the Basque Culinary World Prize and with a lot of international attention on her work and collaborations, Binta is keen to make the most of it.

It takes a village

As a child, Binta and her family were forced to flee from Sierra Leone to neighbouring Guinea because of civil war. She spent two years in a small village where hundreds of refugees had gathered. It proved one of the formative experiences of her life, watching the women of the village prepare food for so many people.

“That experience helped shape me,” says Binta. “The experience of doing everything from scratch, connecting with food and community. Community connection is always around food in places like that.

_{Photo: Francis Kokroko}

“It’s how you connect with people that affects you. So culturally, I’m very intentional, because of my background. So I try to reflect it, in all the work that I do, with the Foundation, the dining on mats concept, highlighting African gastronomy, but I also try to underline our culinary stories. By welcoming people and inviting them to experience my culture through food – using gastronomy as a tool for change. For me, all of that is because of those two years in the village.”

It was later on in life, when she had mapped out a different path for herself that the significance of that experience became apparent. She felt a calling to cook.

“I left Sierra Leone, moved to Spain for a bit,” she says. “I was supposed to return to Africa, but I couldn’t go to Sierra Leone, because there was Ebola. So I went to Ghana, where I had an ‘aha’ moment. I always loved food, I’m passionate about it.

“Coming from an African background… sometimes families don’t support you if you want to choose to do something like that. To them, it didn’t make sense because I had a degree in International Relations, but I wanted to do something with food. Imagine that conversation…”

So she had to take a leap of faith. She had always been a good cook but going to culinary school was a way to convince her family that she was serious, so she went to Nairobi, Kenya and spent three years at a hotel school. Hotel and hospitality industry experience followed but then her nomadic spirit took over.

“I wanted to find my own identity as a chef. I started asking myself questions when I was in culinary school. Like, ‘why am I cooking food that I didn’t grow up eating?’ All my fondest memories of growing up, spending time in that village, I come from a large family, with lots of cousins and food was always a big part of how we connected.

“Now I look at how fast the world is moving, everything is grab and go, I remember sitting down on the floor, sharing food. I don’t see that any more. So I wanted to create something that would make people reflect on food and embrace how food is not just about sustenance, it’s also about change and how we connect. It’s scary, the pace at which we are moving, that’s why I like the rural approach because it forces me to slow down and take my time around food.”

The approach to food that Binta talks about is something that has been lost in the developed world. In a world of overabundance, food is a commodity that loses its meaning. In the village in Guinea, food was central to the community, it bonded that society together. Indeed, sometimes it is the lack of food, and hunger, that bestows more value on it. What is rare is precious.

“It creates empathy,” she says. “It grounds you and makes you think. Humanity needs to be understood, and I think as a chef, you realise how much food can play a role in that.”