Selassie Atadika on the Importance of Food to Tackling Climate Change
This loss isn't in some distant future, says Selassie Atadika, founder of Midunu, an experimental restaurant in Accra that features what she has dubbed 'New African Cuisine.'
'It is actually happening, quietly, throughout the planet—as the climate shifts, seeds vanish and ancestral knowledge disappears before we actually have a chance to pass it on,' Atadika warned at the TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23. Regions across Asia and Africa are already experiencing higher frequencies of floods and drought—disrupting crop-growing patterns.
Midunu uses food to advocate for sustainable agriculture and makes its dishes using local and seasonal ingredients along with traditional grains and proteins. Soon, Atadika plans to launch the Midunu Institute, a space to research, preserve, and teach the principles of African foodways—which she hopes can help offer solutions to many of the world's most pressing issues.
Many researchers and farmers are beginning to turn to Africa's indigenous crops—like finger millet and pigeon pea—as a climate resilient solution to the country's growing food demand. It's an approach Atadika believes is the way forward. 'The recipe for what comes next— it's already here,' she said. 'It's in the hands that still remember. It's in the kitchens that still honor the land. It's in communities that nourish without waste, without forgetting.'
Atadika insists that prioritizing indigenous knowledge is not about nostalgia. 'It's [a] scalable model [of] climate resilience, cultural preservation, and economic dignity. We're talking about value kept at origin. We're talking about leadership from the Global South—rooted, rigorous, and ready.'
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