Early African Food

In South Africa, south of the rain forests, there is open grassland again. Here there were not so many people, and despite the gradual growth of the Kalahari desert the Khoikhoi did not begin farming, but they did get hold of cattle and they began cattle herding. So these people ate a lot of meat, and soon they began milking their cows too and drinking milk.

   
Milking

Around 800 BC, with the arrival of Greek and Phoenician invaders, the people of North Africa began to plant olive orchards and produce olive oil. They ate a lot of it, even though they also shipped a lot all over the Mediterranean and Europe. But olives wouldn’t grow further south.

   
Olives

By around 800 AD, African people began to eat new foods as Indonesian settlers in Madagascar brought many new kinds of Asian foods to Africa. These were bananas, plantains, coconuts, and sugar (from sugar-cane). There were also some new kinds of yams, and new kinds of rice. These foods came first to the east coast of Africa, but then gradually spread all over. Sometime before 1000 AD, soldiers in East Africa also began to eat coffee beans when they needed extra energy for fighting, and soon East African traders were selling coffee to Islamic traders from Yemen.

   
Bananas, plantains, and coconuts  

By 1000 AD, most people in North Africa, West Africa, the Congo river basin, and East Africa were farmers. In south-east Africa most people were cattle herders. Only in the most dry desert areas, or in the wettest, thickest part of the rain forest, were people still hunting and gathering.