Fonio (Digitaria exilis) has been grown across the West African Sahel for over 5,000 years. From Senegal all the way to Chad, nearly every country has a fonio growing region, generally coinciding with the area whose annual rainfall is between 400 mm and 1200 mm.
Fonio thrives even in poor sandy soils, and it reaches edible maturity even during drought conditions.
The fonio harvest’s reliability explains why generation after generation of West African women have planted fonio to feed their families—despite how difficult it is to turn the crop into food.
Probably because fonio saves lives by preventing starvation for people living in precarious circumstances, the grain has a special place in the cultures that grow it.
The Dogon people in Mali refer to fonio as Po – the seed of the universe, the source of all life, like the precursor to the Big Bang!
Mothers often send their children off to their first day of school with a little sachet of fonio grains as a good luck charm.
Fonio is served to guests of honor. Its nickname, ñamu buur in Wolof, means “food for royalty.”
It has even been found entombed in Ancient Egyptian pyramids, so valued that people believed it should be brought with them to the afterlife.
