I grew up in Kesogon village, in Kitale where poverty wore many faces—but hunger was not one of them. In our smoky, soot-darkened kitchen, my grandmother stirred bubbling pots of githeri, fried sucha (spider plant), and steaming nduma (arrowroot). These foods were not luxuries; they were life—cheap, nutritious, and abundant. We never thought of them as “heritage cuisine”. They were simply food.
Today, that same githeri is featured on Nairobi’s finest restaurant menus under names like “deconstructed maize-bean medley”. Sucha is plated in geometric perfection and called “organic amaranth.” Nduma comes with imported truffle oil. Prices in these hotels soar to thousands of shillings—well beyond the reach of the people who originally cultivated, preserved, and depended on these staples.
But as our indigenous foods become trendy among the urban elite, they are becoming inaccessible to the very communities that once thrived on them. What once symbolised resilience and nourishment has been gentrified into boutique exclusivity. The irony is bitter—both figuratively and, in the case of some of our traditional greens, literally.
Our grandparents didn’t have PhDs in nutrition or food systems, but they understood principles that global experts now rebrand as “climate-smart” and “sustainable agriculture”. They knew how to eat seasonally, relying on nature’s cycles instead of artificial fertilisers or imports. They planted diverse crops on small plots—cassava next to cowpeas, sweet potatoes beneath bananas—ensuring resilience in the face of unpredictable weather. They practiced zero waste: Pumpkin leaves, seeds, and flesh all had a place on the plate.
We abandoned this wisdom in the name of modernity. Colonial agricultural policy promoted maize mono-cropping as the gold standard, while market globalisation glamourised bleached wheat flour and imported rice. Traditional knowledge was dismissed as primitive. Slowly, we became dependent on a few fragile crops and on food systems we no longer controlled.
Today, with climate change bearing down and global food chains unraveling, the ancestral knowledge we discarded may be our only lifeline.
Across rural Kenya, something remarkable is happening. Finger millet, once scoffed at as poor man’s porridge, is now sold at Sh200 per kilogramme in Nairobi—three times the price of maize flour. Black beans (dengu) are being packaged for export to Europe and North America, where they’re marketed as “high-protein vegan power food.” Amaranth, or terere, appears in five-star hotel buffets, artfully arranged and sprinkled with imported cheese.
If Kenya is to address its dual crises of hunger and malnutrition, we must first rethink our relationship with food. That begins with dismantling the notion that modernity means abandoning indigenous knowledge. We must ask hard questions: Why are school lunch programmes still modelled on maize and beans only? Why do government subsidies prioritise hybrid maize over sorghum, millet, and indigenous vegetables? Why are children taught to crave fast food but not taught how to grow mchicha?
The path forward is clear—but it requires political will and cultural courage. There is need to establish urban-rural food partnerships where city consumers invest directly in farms growing traditional crops. This builds inclusive food systems and shortens supply chains. We must also modernise tradition by supporting innovation that creates shelf-stable, ready-to-cook versions of indigenous dishes such as fortified githeri or vacuum-packed terere stew, while preserving nutritional value.
Schools should introduce gardens focused on indigenous crops and invite grandmothers and community elders into classrooms to pass down cooking knowledge before it disappears.
Finally, if we can subsidise maize and fertiliser, we can do the same for millet, sweet potatoes, and traditional vegetables. It is time for the national food policy to reflect the ecological and cultural diversity of our land. The tragedy isn’t just that Kenyans are going hungry—it’s that we are starving amidst abundance.
By Samuel Macharia