Kelvin Eze, an entrepreneur and online brand strategist has introduced African Food Network website: https://afrifoodnetwork.com, to showcase different African recipes and promote local chefs within the continent.
The website, African Food Network, is a food platform where food lovers learn new recipes, watch videos from different food bloggers and submit special recipes to be published.
‘‘As part of our mission to promote our own chefs, we also have a special page dedicated to promote African chefs but we would still stick to our goal of redefining the world view of African cuisines,” said Eze.
‘‘African Food Network is designed to inspire creativity in viewers’ kitchens and self-empowerment in their lives while representing Africa as a continent in a more positive way,’’ he said.
The entrepreneur who said he has been ardent food lover since he was a child told BusinessDay that the creation of the food platform was borne out of the need for proper education in the preparation of African delicacies.
“I also want to promote our local chefs. The world is interested in Africa and we have to portray Africa in the best way possible” he said.
According to Eze, his curiosity to find out why African dishes are not promoted in restaurants the way they ought to with most people making African dishes inferior to foreign ones, led to his creation of a food blog.
“When I was a boy, I asked my mother why big restaurants promote intercontinental dishes and not our local delicacies but she couldn’t give me a tangible response,’’ he said.
‘‘In 2009, I created a personal food blog to showcase my food journey and most of the food I posted there were our local delicacies. The food blog gave birth to the African food network idea,’’ Eze said.
Continuing, he said, ‘‘I am working on a project with Nena Ubani, a popular African Vegan Chef in UK and Maryam al-Mansour, a medical doctor with specialization in Nutrition Education, on promoting healthy eating.’’
‘‘We are currently working on a monetization plan for food bloggers and a mobile app would be launched before the end of the year because we are currently gathering thousands of contents for the directory,’’ he added.
Chinwe Agbeze
