TED Talks Daily
What I learned from cooking my way across a continent | Dieuveil Malonga
23 Jan 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What inspired Dieuveil Malonga to explore African cuisine?
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Chapter 2: How did Dieuveil Malonga's upbringing influence his culinary journey?
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Today's talk is part of our new 2025 TED Fellows Films, adapted for podcasts just for our TED Talks Daily listeners.
Chapter 3: What unique cooking techniques did Malonga learn during his travels?
This is part of a special series of episodes we release throughout the year, showcasing the incredible stories behind the TED Fellows program, which supports a network of global innovators. Today, we'd like you to meet chef and culinary innovator, Duivel Malanga. Duivel Malanga.
Malanga has traveled to nearly every country in Africa, tasting flavors straight from farms and local kitchens to learn about the traditions that transform a dish. Today, he runs a culinary center in Rwanda, where he works to train the next generation of top chefs from across the continent, collaboratively crafting food that shares each country's culinary secrets with the world.
Chapter 4: How does Malonga's Culinary Innovation Village promote African cuisine?
He shares the importance of honoring where you're from while also embracing the diversity and joy of the world's many flavors. After we hear from Malonga, stick around for his conversation with TED Fellows Program Director Lily James Olds.
The good thing with food, like food bring people together, food on the border. I believe the new generation really are pushing now to promote the amazing food heritage we have in the continent. My name is Jovay Malonga and I'm a chef.
Chapter 5: What role does fermentation play in African cooking?
I've worked in many restaurants from Paris, from Germany, U.S., Japan, Thailand. My experience in a fine dining restaurant around the world was amazing. I've learned amazing technique. I've met amazing people. I realized myself that I wanted to know more about Pan-African cuisine.
Chapter 6: How do food celebrations differ across African cultures?
And I took the initiative like to go back to the continent. I wanted to learn. I wanted to go back to school, to the grandmother school. I took two years just traveling in Africa. I've learned about food, about culture, and also about the continent, the history.
Chapter 7: What recipes should aspiring chefs try from African cuisine?
And I go to learn by grandmother about Africans' cuisine. First, it's not just African cuisine. It's countries. cuisine. Africa is a continent with 54 countries.
Chapter 8: Why is cross-generational learning important in culinary traditions?
I've visited more than 48 countries. I started with Cameroon. That was amazing. I was like a baby learning new things. The first things I've learned was the national dish. Call it ndole. They call it like a recipe for a king. If someone cooks ndole for you, it looks like the person loves you. Because Ndoli takes a lot of time. It's, let's say, seven or six hours. And there's a lot of ingredients.
I went to the village. We did it together with grandmother for my friends. And we spent all day. But the taste was amazing. It's difficult to say how many recipes I've learned, but I've learned many recipes, a lot. In Nigeria, we have more than 200 tribes, and every tribe has a different dish. So I can describe we have more than a million and billion recipes in the continent.
In Senegal, yassa is a stew, but the main product they use are onions. In Rwanda, green banana. They call it kistafria. Sometimes they mix with chicken or like, it's like a stew. In Congo, jersey. Fumbua is made by us, so it's the leaves that find it more in the forest. Spice is very important for me. Spice is life. Pangea pepper is one of the best pepper for me in the world.
The Pangea have something sweetness and also it's close to lemongrass. You must taste it really to understand. Pangea pepper grow only in Pangea region. I like to go to visit harvest for Pangea pepper because most of time the people are singing and at the same time, of mango and mango rife. And personally, when I'm there, I like to go to help the people in the farm, and I also eat the mango.
In different countries in Africa, people celebrate food. People don't eat, but we celebrate food. It's part of our life. When you taste the dish, firstly, you know people who's growing product. You know story behind. I think it's very different. For me, it was like, I was tasting, but it was also experience. When I was in Germany, I was working in one of the best restaurants in the world.
I didn't get a connection with the product because you can have a carrot, but it comes from the market. You don't know. The story behind, that was the big difference. My first time that I tasted the carrot when I was in Cameroon, I was different. Number one, like, it was sweet and flavorful. And the texture was very different. And it was very small carrot.
It was not like the big carrot that we usually use in Europe. And I was very surprised. I was connected with the product, with the people, and with the region. After traveling, my ambition was like, I want to share what I've learned in different countries in one place. Culinary Innovation Village is a food campus that we have created with my team. We have a training center.
We train the next generation after, let's say, the big chef of tomorrow. The students come from different countries in Africa. From now, we have seven nationalities. and they bring another new dish, they bring Sadama another new way of farming. It's a huge exchange between me and the students. When I travel, I bring many seeds from different countries.
We have more than 100 varieties of fruit and vegetables. We teach our students how to farm. And also, we have a restaurant, Meza Malunga, there we do most of the time food experience. The ambition is to promote the African ingredients and spices. I focus more on the story of people and the product. For me, food is sharing and education.
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