Food Is an African Feminist Issue

This essay argues that food—particularly the labor of preparing and producing food—should be seen as central to South African feminism, and to African feminisms more broadly. Salo explains how women provide the majority of the labor to produce food on the African continent, yet often are exposed to hunger because they do not own the means to food production. Moreover, as agribusiness encroaches on foodways and food production lands in Africa, this sector attempts to incorporate women in ways that continue to render them gendered subordinates in an unequal economic and political system. Centering food provides an important means for African feminists to continue recognizing the imbrication of gendered oppression with colonialism and neocolonialism, and to challenge these hierarchies while pursuing sustainability and social justice. Women’s agencies as food producers also offer alternatives to agribusiness and corporate food, including small-scale farming or gardening projects that intersect with political activism in urban and peri-urban areas. Salo discusses how such African women’s strategies align with concepts such as food sovereignty and ecofeminism, but also need to be recognized as occurring beyond the cultures of academic expertise often associated with such terms.