Today marked the end of the beginning of my journey transversing our beautiful continent, working to see FORMAL financial inclusion for ALL Africans with the help of Digital Payments what I like to call #CashlessAfrica. With a home base in the birth place of Africa’s independence, Ghana and life on the road most of the time, you can imagine I have a lot of stories and I’ll do my best to share.

First up, food.

For a vegetarian East African in Ghana and traveling mostly in West Africa in last 3 months, it has been quite the experience. Meat of many animals and some – if not all their parts; Joloff rice (will share about my favorite); fufu of pounded yam, cassava or fermented corn in either banku or kenke; plantain in all forms, fried plain or with pepper or in some type of cake batter, or steamed and more rice are the order of the day. There’s a time I was super excited to find a dish that looked like spinach in the cafeteria, I was ecstatic, even did a little dance. Unfortunately, this lovely green was ruined with meat, or was it fish, and just like that my high was iced quick! Thankfully, I am now able to enjoy some veg options, albeit with pepper and floating palm oil sometimes :-).

If you are a meat lover, you will love many places in West Africa. If you aren’t, brace yourself because a good salad and my favorite spinach are a hard find. You’ll have to find a great salad place, and this is no easy task. You may also be lucky to find frozen spinach in the supermarket. With a lot of time on the road and many late nights, I eat what I find. Needless to say the carb overload and effects of the road shows around my waist and hips hehe. I laugh but it’s painful work to get back to shape.

For vegetarians:

In Accra, be sure to checkout Bistro 22, Nourish Lab, Sunshine for salads and hearty healthy smoothies. Mango and Wheat have samosas to die for.

In Cotonou, L’Impala and l’imprévu are gems.

In Lomé, Sarakawa, Onomo and Former Radisson can whip up a good salad. Make sure you have google translate to help you ask for specific ingredients.

In Côte d’Ivoire, Abidjan Cafe and Salad & Sun were a good treat.

Feel free to share recommendations I can check out next time I visit.