According to Fabio Parasecoli, Associate and director of Food Studies initiatives, from New School – New York city, African cuisines are striving to achieve the visibility and popularity among consumers in the Global North that other culinary tradition from the Global South have been enjoying. He had the opportunity, on the occasion of a public event at the New School, of discussing with Senegalese chef, entrepreneur and author Pierre Thiam, about the landscape of African cuisines.
Pierre Thiam pointed out that African chefs have to explain and reassure patrons about the unexpected familiarity of the cuisine of Africa and that the diffusion of commercial crops, which ensure higher yields and sales on the global market, threatens to displace plant varieties unique to Africa. Tiam believes that chefs may play a crucial role in the conservation of biodiversity by highlighting the qualities and the cultural value of ingredients that have suffered from being considered backward.