You know when a song you loved in your kitchen suddenly becomes everyone’s ringtone? That’s African food right now but louder, spicier and with better packaging. Your aunt’s pilau or jollof, which used to be the unofficial peace keeper at family feuds, now has people queuing outside Michelin‑adjacent spots in London and scrolling for recipes at 2 a.m. because it looked aesthetic on TikTok. West African flavours in particular have been trending hard, jollof, suya and braised things that make your eyebrows do a little happy dance. One industry spotlight showed that West African food represented the top trending cuisine of 2023, rising 72% year‑over‑year.

Why is this happening now? I have a few assumptions and reasons. Diaspora energy (millions of Africans cooking what they loved back home and opening spots abroad), chefs reclaiming and elevating heirloom recipes and social media turning Naija comfort into global FOMO. There’s also the delicious irony that pantry staples Africans have used for centuries (teff, millet, plantain) now get labelled superfoods in articles and meal plans. One analysis notes that the interest in West African food was years in the making…globalisation has shrunk our world, opening minds and mouths to diverse cultures. 

Let me be dramatic for a second, a Nigerian chef recently broke the Guinness World Record cooking the largest jollof yes, a pot enormous enough to star in its own nature documentary and people cheered. That’s definitely a flex, its manpower served with rice and tomatoes. 

But it’s not only about viral stunts. In cities from New York to London, restaurants run by African and African diaspora chefs are moving from the beloved but hidden to the unapologetically celebrated. Some places are keeping things humble as spicy street skewers and plantain chips while others are doing fine dining,remixing stews and smoking techniques into tasting menus that make critics write tear filled headlines. In short, it’s both  the street and the stage.

This takeover feels different from other global cuisine moments. There’s more of a cultural long game of people teaching each other recipes over calls, restaurants scaling into chains and packaged products showing up in mainstream supermarkets. Also, TikTok dances now come with side dishes.

Of course, with popularity comes messier things. People will try to JPEG‑ify recipes into fusion bowls that barely remember their origin and corporations will slap inspired by on a bag of crisps and call it a day. There’s a real conversation to be had about whose names get remembered when cuisine goes global. I believe the home cooks, the market stall aunties, and the restaurants doing the heavy lifting deserve credit, not just the trend feeds. Which is why seeing chefs and entrepreneurs from African backgrounds expand and own the narrative from grassroots to franchising plans matters. It shifts the story from the exotic trend to cultural export with roots.

So what does this mean for you, dear reader? Try new things without being performative. Ask where the food comes from. Share recipes that credit source communities. Most importantly, eat the plantain chips, the stews, the street skewers. Because food is how stories travel. It folds history into taste, grief into comfort and a continent’s memory into your lunchbox.

And for the skeptics who say “this is just a trend”, trends are temporary but people who keep feeding each other are not. African food’s global glow up isn’t a passing viral moment, it’s a continental playlist finally on everyone’s speaker. Enjoy the songs, learn the lyrics and maybe if you’re brave, learn to make jollof that actually earns you family approval. If your pot comes close, you might just set a world record. (No pressure.)