StapleCentral African Republic
Gozo
Cassava flour cooked into a stiff paste, the daily starch of the Central African Republic. Rolled in the palm and dipped in whatever sauce there is.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Mbum
Farmers and ironworkers of the Adamawa plateau's eastern edge, whose chiefdoms were broken by the nineteenth-century Fulani jihad and whose territory spans three countries at the point where the Chari and the Sanaga rise.
Identity
Population: Estimated 100,000 to 200,000 across three countries
Location: The Nana-Mambéré and Ouham-Pendé areas of the western Central African Republic, the Adamawa region of Cameroon around Ngaoundéré, and southern Chad
Language: Mbum (Mbum-Nord and related varieties)
Language family: Niger-Congo → Adamawa-Ubangi → Adamawa (Mbum group)
Traditional governance: Chiefdoms historically, notably the Belaka of Ngaoundéré before the Fulani conquest; today Central African, Cameroonian and Chadian local administration alongside customary authority.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Mbum of Ngaoundéré
The Cameroonian Adamawa communities, under Fulani lamidate since the 1830s.
Mbum of the CAR west
Communities around Bouar and Baboua.
Karang and Pana
Closely related Mbum-group communities of the Chad-Cameroon border.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress with strong Fulani and Islamic influence in Adamawa; the older hide and iron ornament in the ethnographic record.
Food: Sorghum and maize porridge, cassava, groundnuts, milk in the herding households, meat at ceremony, and the millet beer that persists where Islam has not displaced it.
Ceremonies: Chiefly installations; harvest and rain rites; funerals; Islamic calendar observances in Adamawa, Christian ones in much of the CAR communities.
Marriage customs: Patrilineal and clan-exogamous with bridewealth in cattle and iron; the Fulani conquest reshaped marriage among the Adamawa Mbum considerably.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision with instruction; the older Mbum initiations declined under Fulani and then mission pressure.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Central African Republic, Cameroon and Chad, at national rather than community level — 33 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Central African Republic
10 dishes
StapleCentral African Republic
Boule de Manioc
also Gozo ball, Cassava fufu
Cassava flour worked into a smooth dense ball, the Central African staple, torn off and used to lift sauce. Made in every household daily.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
National dishCentral African Republic
Kanda ti Nyma
Meatballs of beef and ground squash seeds cooked in a tomato and groundnut sauce, wrapped in leaves in the traditional version. A dish of the Ubangi river country.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishCentral African Republic
Sauce Arachide
also Groundnut sauce, Kanda ti nyma
Groundnut paste cooked with meat, tomato and chilli into a thick red-brown sauce, the dish that turns up at every Central African table.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Street foodCentral African Republic
Makara
Fried dough balls sold at markets and roadsides with sweet tea, eaten at breakfast or bought by the handful for a journey.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours 15 minutes
Street foodCentral African Republic
Kanya
also Peanut brittle bar, Kanyah
Roasted peanuts pounded with sugar and a little rice flour and pressed into bars, sold at markets and bus stops across the Central African Republic.
Serves Makes about 20 bars · 40 minutes
Festival & feastCentral African Republic
Poulet à la Moambé
Chicken cooked in palm nut pulp with chilli and garlic, made for guests and celebrations across the Congo basin. Orange, rich and served over cassava.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialityCentral African Republic
Koko
Forest vine leaves shredded very fine and cooked with palm oil, smoked fish and groundnut. The same plant as Cameroonian eru, gathered from the same forest.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
Regional specialityCentral African Republic
Poisson Fumé aux Feuilles
also Smoked fish with greens
Smoked river fish cooked with cassava or gnetum leaves and palm oil, the standard meal along the Ubangi and its tributaries.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Drink & sweetCentral African Republic
Ngbako
Maize or cassava beer fermented in villages and drunk from a shared vessel at gatherings and funerals. Cloudy, sour and drunk young.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 3 days
Cameroon
12 dishes
StapleCameroon
Fufu Corn
Maize flour beaten into a smooth stiff paste, eaten with njama njama or huckleberry greens in the north-west. The standard plate of the Anglophone highlands.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
StapleCameroon
Koki Beans
also Koki corn, Ekoki
Black-eyed beans ground to a paste with palm oil and spinach, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a savoury pudding. A Cameroonian street and household staple.
Serves 8 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking
National dishCameroon
Ndolé
Bitterleaf boiled repeatedly to draw out the bitterness, then cooked with ground groundnuts, shrimp and meat. Cameroon's national dish, from the Douala coast.
Serves 8 · 2 hours
National dishCameroon
Mbongo Tchobi
also Black stew, Sauce noire
Fish or meat in a jet-black sauce made from burnt spices — mbongo seed, country onion and njangsa — from the Bassa country around Edéa. Smoky, bitter and unlike anything else in Africa.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodCameroon
Soya
Beef skewers rubbed in a groundnut and chilli spice mix and grilled over charcoal, sold from evening braziers across the north and in every Yaoundé quarter.
Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating
Festival & feastCameroon
Eru
Wild forest vine leaves shredded fine and cooked with waterleaf, palm oil and smoked fish, from the south-west. Made for celebrations and eaten with water fufu.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Festival & feastCameroon
Achu Soup
also Yellow soup, Taro fufu and yellow soup
Pounded taro served with a bright yellow palm-oil soup coloured with limestone, the ceremonial dish of Cameroon's North West grassfields, eaten with the fingers from a shared bowl.
Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Poulet DG
Chicken with fried ripe plantain and vegetables, whose name stands for Directeur Général because it was originally what you served a man of importance.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Kondre
also Plantain and goat stew
Goat and unripe plantain stewed with country onion and njangsa until the plantain thickens the pot. A grassfields dish cooked for visitors and for the head of the household.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityCameroon
Sanga
also Maize and cassava leaf
Fresh maize kernels cooked with cassava leaf and palm oil into a thick green-and-gold porridge. A Beti and southern Cameroonian dish of the maize harvest.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Drink & sweetCameroon
Foléré
Hibiscus juice with pineapple, ginger and mint, sold from freezers in the north and served cold at every celebration. Cameroon's name for what is bissap elsewhere.
Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling
Drink & sweetCameroon
Bil-Bil
also Millet beer, Bilibili
Sorghum beer of northern Cameroon, brewed by women in great clay pots and sold from the compound door. Sour, cloudy and drunk from a shared calabash.
Serves Makes about 8 litres · 1 hour active, plus 4 days germinating and 3 days fermenting
Chad
11 dishes
StapleChad
La Boule
also Aiysh
Millet or sorghum porridge shaped into a ball and served with sauce, the daily food of most of Chad. Eaten by hand from a shared bowl by the whole household.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
StapleChad
Sauce Longue
also Okra sauce, Sauce gluante
Dried okra powder cooked into a deliberately viscous sauce with meat and sesame, ladled over boule. The stringiness is the point and the mark of a good one.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 20 minutes
National dishChad
Daraba
Okra, sweet potato, aubergine and greens stewed with groundnut paste into a thick vegetable sauce, served over la boule. Chad's national dish and almost always meatless.
Serves 6 · 1 hour
National dishChad
Nachif
also Minced beef with spices
Beef minced or finely chopped and fried hard with onion, tomato and spice until dry and crisp at the edges, served with boule or bread across Chad.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Street foodChad
Kissar
Thin fermented sorghum flatbread spread on a hot plate, the same as Sudanese kisra and eaten across eastern Chad with stew.
Serves Makes 12 · 30 minutes, plus 2 days fermenting
Festival & feastChad
Mouton Grillé
Whole mutton grilled over embers for Eid and for guests, seasoned with nothing more than salt and cumin. The animal itself is the statement.
Serves 10 · 3 hours 30 minutes
Festival & feastChad
Karkanji
also Spiced hibiscus drink
Hibiscus steeped with ginger, cloves and mint, the Chadian festival and Ramadan drink, sweeter and more heavily spiced than the Sudanese karkade.
Serves Makes 2 litres · 30 minutes, plus 3 hours steeping
Regional specialityChad
Poisson Salanga
Fish from the Chari or Lake Chad, split, salted, sun-dried and then grilled, from the Sara country of the south. The smell of the drying racks carries for a long way.
Serves 4 · 40 minutes, plus 2 days drying
Regional specialityChad
Poisson Séché en Sauce
also Dried fish stew, Salanga en sauce
The Chari's sun-dried fish rehydrated and stewed with tomato, onion and dried okra, the everyday protein of the Chadian river country.
Serves 6 · 50 minutes
Drink & sweetChad
Bili Bili
Millet beer brewed and sold by women from courtyards in southern Chad, drunk warm and cloudy from a calabash. A marked pot outside means today's batch is ready.
Serves Makes about 5 litres · 4 days
Drink & sweetChad
Bouillie de Mil
also Millet porridge, Bouillie
Millet porridge soured overnight and thinned with milk or tamarind, drunk in the morning and at the breaking of the fast across the Chadian sahel.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes, plus overnight souring
Stories & Oral Literature
The Megaliths of BouarArchaeological heritage
Around Bouar in the western Central African Republic stand some seventy groups of megalithic monuments — the tazunu — of upright stone slabs over burial and ritual deposits, dated to the first millennium BCE and later. They are among the largest concentrations of megaliths in Africa and have been on the UNESCO tentative list since 2006. Their builders are not securely identified with any present community, and the Mbum among whom they stand treat them as ancestral without claiming to have raised them.
The Lamidate of NgaoundéréPolitical history
The Mbum chiefdom at Ngaoundéré, under a ruler titled the Belaka, was conquered in the 1830s during the Fulani jihad that created the Adamawa emirate, and a Fulani lamido was installed. The Mbum were incorporated as a subject population, with the Belaka retained in a subordinate ritual role that persists: the lamido's installation still requires Mbum participation. It is an unusually clear case of a conquered dynasty surviving as a ritual guarantor of its conqueror's legitimacy.
The CorridorContemporary conflict
Western CAR — Mbum country — sits on the road from Cameroon to Bangui, the country's economic lifeline, and has been fought over accordingly since 2013 by Séléka, anti-balaka and successor armed groups. Bouar, Baboua and Cantonnier have seen repeated displacement, and the transhumance corridors along which Fulani herders move between Chad, Cameroon and the CAR run through the same ground, making pastoral movement itself a security question.
Proverbs
“The stones were standing before the chiefs and will stand after.”
On the megaliths.
“The conqueror needs the conquered to crown him.”
On the Belaka's ritual role at Ngaoundéré.
“A road is a blessing until an army wants it.”
On the Cameroon corridor.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high god of the Adamawa tradition; ancestral spirits; the megalithic sites and named hills and springs treated with prohibition.
Beliefs: Ancestral offerings and rain rites in the older tradition; Islam among the Adamawa Mbum since the nineteenth century; Catholic and Protestant Christianity in the Central African communities.
Ancestors: Ancestors are addressed at lineage sites; the Belaka's genealogy is recited at Ngaoundéré installations, where a conquered line's descent underwrites a conquering one's authority.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The high god
The remote creator of the Adamawa tradition
Ancestral spirits
Addressed at lineage sites and at the megalithic groups
Site powers
Presences of named hills, springs and stone groups
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of round thatched houses with granaries on the plateau, within fences; Ngaoundéré with the lamido's palace complex in the Fulani-Adamawa style.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with conical grass thatch; woven and mud-plastered granaries; iron smelting and forging, historically substantial; megalithic construction in the ancient period.
Village layout: Houses around a swept yard with granaries behind; the stone groups standing apart on the plateau, uncultivated around.
Artifacts
Tazunu megaliths of Bouar
Heritage site
Some seventy groups of standing stone monuments over burial deposits, from the first millennium BCE.
Iron smelting furnace remains
Industrial heritage
Evidence of a substantial pre-colonial iron industry on the plateau.
Belaka regalia
Regalia
Insignia of the Mbum chiefship that survives in a ritual role within the Ngaoundéré lamidate.
Woven granaries
Craft
Mud-plastered stores raised against damp and rodents.
Historical Timeline
First millennium BCE
Megalithic monuments are raised around Bouar on the western plateau.
Pre-1800
Mbum chiefdoms occupy the Adamawa plateau's eastern edge, smelting iron and farming.
1830s
The Fulani jihad conquers Ngaoundéré; a lamido is installed and the Belaka retained in a ritual role.
1890s–1960
German, French and then independent administrations divide Mbum country three ways.
2013–present
Central African conflict makes the western corridor a contested route; transhumance movement becomes a security question.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO tentative list — Megaliths of BouarUNESCO World Heritage Centre
Premium & scholarly sources
- Burnham, The Politics of Cultural Difference in Northern CameroonJSTOR
- Ethnologue: MbumSIL International