Wiki Loves Africa is an annual competition that encourages Africans to enter media from photographs, video and audio. The competition seeks to bring together and bring to light fragments of life that are alien to one another. This year’s competition allows through photographs, video and audio people to share their African cuisine thus sharing their souls.
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For this year of 2014 the theme for the contest is ‘African cuisine’. Africa has a conflicted relationship with food. It is one of joy and sadness. Over the past years, famines have swept through much of Africa and to a large extent still continue to do. Food is the way in which African people speak, court and celebrate. But also food has to be attained and this is what brings the sad relationship that Africa has with food.
Food in Africa is also a form of revolution. The rich have food in abundance and the poor work long hours only to afford a spoonful.
As the Angolan proverb states: “A spoon of soup in need has more value than a pot of soup when we have an abundance of food.”
African cuisine is not only a matter of taste and this is why the media submitted in this competition should be read beyond what they appear to be. Food in Africa is about the politics of food production, circulation and consumption, culture, identity, gender and politics. For those who live on foreign countries, food becomes a vessel in which they assert and express who they are, where they come from, and in countries that have different cuisines, it becomes a way to merge their cultural backgrounds with their daily lives in countries that are not their own.
The 2014 competition, African Cuisine, seeks to document in various themes the diverse types of cuisines that exist in the continent of Africa. The themes encompass “foods”, “dishes”, “crops”, “husbandry”, “culinary art”, “cooking methods”, “utensils”, “food markets”, traditional symbols and arts “festivals”, “culinary events”, “famine food” and any other issues related to cuisine on the African continent.
The contest runs from 1 October to 30 November 2014. The project will be run in the entire continent with training and communication sessions held in countries with national Wiki Loves Africa organisers.
The competition has prizes and the best media will be available at Wikimedia Commons.
