The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development together with farmers from Umkhanyakude District held a function to promote traditional food in Mtubatuba. The main objective was to promote Traditional Food Knowledge (TFK) by hosting a day where feasts of indigenous African dishes were prepared.

Traditional Food Knowledge (TFK) refers to the cultural tradition of sharing food provisioning skills, techniques and cultural beliefs from generation to generation. Traditional food knowledge can be a means of asserting cultural identity, particularly for cultural groups. Transmitting this knowledge may contribute to personal skills that relate to food security and personal nutrition and enhanced community capacity.

Lima facilitators from the Empowerment for Food Security Programme (EFSP) attended this event and commented on how important it is to promote traditional food in rural and urban communities because there are nutritional values in particular foods that many people are not aware of.

The Traditional Food Promotion Day was therefore set aside for information sharing. The event drew participation of farmers from all over Umkhanyakude District and delicious indigenous African dishes were displayed. Some of the dishes included Isitambu (Samp), Maas, Umcaba, Isinkwa sombila. Demonstrations on how to use various agricultural crops to make these dishes were also conducted by farmers themselves and included orange fleshed sweet potato processing, pumpkin juice making, mushroom dishes, peanut butter manufacturing, creamed amadumbe soup and ground maize.

MEC Lydia Johnson participated in the day’s activities and encouraged people to indulge more on traditional food. “We want to encourage the people of KZN to go back to their roots and reflect our culture through food every day. Over and above that we want to promote traditional dishes as food that is equally edible as with the other mouth-watering dishes that you find in retail stores” said Johnson. She also called on farmers to increase production of indigenous food crops and learn how to preserve and process them to make indigenous African dishes.

MEC Lydia Johnson passes on words of wisdom to Mama Magwaza and her team of farmers from Mtuba Municipality. These women have developed a range of Sweet Potato items (above) which include juices, chips, sweet potato bites, etc.	Minse Modi, Zinhle Ngubane, Zinhle Nzimande, Mama Dlamini, Zandile Nxumalo and Kamukota Kaluwa enjoy the festivities of the day.