National dish

What is the national dish of Ghana?

Ghana has no official national dish. The two dishes most often named are fufu, boiled cassava pounded with plantain or cocoyam in a wooden mortar into a soft, sticky dough eaten with soup, and jollof rice, rice cooked in a tomato, onion and chilli stew. Fufu is the more Ghanaian of the two: the word itself comes from Twi, an Akan language.

Updated 2026-10-124 min read

Does Ghana have an official national dish?

No. No law or government declaration names a national dish for Ghana. When the question comes up, two dishes are cited: fufu and jollof rice. They are very different things, and the fact that both are named says a lot about how Ghanaians eat.

Ghanaian cooking is built on a starchy staple served with a soup or stew and a source of protein. Fufu is one of those staples, the one most tied to the Akan peoples of the south. Jollof rice is a one-pot rice dish that arrived from further west and became a point of national pride.

What counts as the staple also depends on where you are. In the south, cassava and plantain dominate; in the north, millet and sorghum; yam, maize and beans are eaten everywhere. Soups and stews are a main course, not a starter, and most of them start from the same base of tomatoes, hot peppers and onions, which is why so many Ghanaian dishes are red or orange.

What is fufu?

Fufu is boiled cassava pounded together with plantain or cocoyam. In Ghana it is made in a wooden mortar called a woduro with a long wooden pestle, the woma. Between blows, one person turns the mixture by hand and adds water little by little until it becomes a soft, sticky dough, which is then shaped into a smooth round.

The word is Twi, the language of the Akan, and the dish is believed to come from the Asante, Akuapem, Akyem, Bono and Fante peoples. According to the historian cited by Wikipedia, fufu literally means "white" in Twi, probably after the colour of the cassava. Since the invention of the fufu machine, making it is much less labour-intensive.

Fufu is never eaten on its own. It always comes with a soup, and you eat it with the fingers of the right hand: pinch off a piece, roll it into a small ball and dip it. The usual soups are:

Light soup: a thin tomato-based soup.
Groundnut soup: made with peanuts.
Palm nut soup: made from the fruit of the oil palm.
Kontomire soup: made with cocoyam (taro) leaves.

Why jollof rice is named too

Jollof rice is rice cooked in a stew of tomatoes, onions, chilli and spices, usually served with stewed, roasted or grilled goat, lamb, chicken or beef. It did not start in Ghana: the dish traces back to the Wolof or Jolof Empire in what is now Senegal, and Ghanaian cuisine credits Jolof traders who settled in the Zongo communities before the colonial period.

In the 2010s, Ghana and Nigeria turned their versions into a friendly rivalry known as the "Jollof wars", fought through cooking competitions, songs and social media. That rivalry, more than any official decision, is why jollof is so often called a national dish. You can compare with Nigeria's national dish and with Senegal's thieboudienne, the dish jollof descends from.

Banku: the fermented dough of the south

Fufu is not the only dough Ghanaians eat with soup. Banku is a staple of the Ga-Dangme people around Accra: maize and cassava are soaked, milled wet and left to ferment for two to five days until clearly sour. The name comes from the Dangme phrase "ba mi ku", food kept in leaves.

The dough is mixed roughly three parts corn to one part cassava, then cooked for 20 to 30 minutes while being beaten and folded against the pot with a flat wooden stick until smooth and glossy. In Accra it is classically eaten with charcoal-grilled tilapia and a raw pepper sauce pounded in an earthenware asanka bowl. Our banku and tilapia recipe gives every step.

Banku is eaten with the hands like fufu: pinch off a piece and dip it. Among the Ewe, a close relative called akple is usually served with okra soup.

Other dishes to know from Ghana

Waakye, pronounced WAH-chay, is rice and black-eyed peas cooked in water first stained deep red-brown by dried sorghum leaves. The name comes from Dagbani, and the dish is thought to come from the Mole-Dagbon people of northern Ghana. Roadside sellers wrap it in leaves and serve it with shito, gari, boiled egg, spaghetti (called talia) and fried plantain.

Kelewele is a snack of cubes of very ripe plantain rested 30 minutes in a paste of ginger, chilli, anise seed, cloves and nutmeg, then deep-fried until the edges caramelise dark brown, with roasted peanuts on the side.

Ghana shares its dough-and-soup tradition with its neighbours, as you can see across West African food. All three dishes, with ingredients and step-by-step methods, are on our page about the food of Ghana.

The recipes

Questions people ask

Is fufu from Ghana or Nigeria?

Fufu is eaten across West and Central Africa, but the word is Twi and the dish is believed to originate with the Akan peoples of what is now Ghana. In Nigeria, fufu is usually made from fermented cassava alone, which gives it a different thickness.

Is jollof rice from Ghana or Nigeria?

Neither, originally. Jollof rice traces back to the Wolof (Jolof) region of present-day Senegal. Ghana and Nigeria each have their own version, and their rivalry over whose is better is known as the "Jollof wars".

What is fufu eaten with?

Fufu is always served with a soup, most often light soup, groundnut soup or palm nut soup, It is eaten with the right hand, rolled into small balls and dipped.

What is the difference between fufu and banku?

Fufu is boiled cassava and plantain or cocoyam pounded into a dough. Banku is fermented maize and cassava dough cooked in a pot and beaten smooth, so it tastes slightly sour.

How do you pronounce waakye?

Waakye is pronounced WAH-chay. The name comes from Dagbani, a language of northern Ghana.

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