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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Côte d’Ivoire
Côte d’IvoireAfrica · This week's dish comes from Abidjan (Lagunes)
About Côte d’Ivoire
Ivorian food is West African comfort, attiéké (fermented cassava couscous), grilled fish with fiery pepper, and kedjenou chicken slow-cooked in its own juices. Cassava, plantain, and groundnut anchor a bold, everyday table.
The skills behind attieke were inscribed by UNESCO in 2024. It belongs to the lagoon peoples of the south, and the method is specific: cassava peeled and ground, mixed with a portion of already-fermented cassava to start it off, pressed, granulated and steamed. Production is women's work, while the growing and grinding is men's.
Kedjenou is cooked without stirring. Chicken or guinea fowl goes into a canari, a sealed clay pot, with tomato, onion, ginger and chilli and no added liquid, and the pot is shaken from time to time rather than opened, so everything cooks in the juices it gives up. It is served with attieke or rice.
The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.
This week's dish: Bouillie d'Arachide
A creamy Ivorian peanut-and-millet breakfast porridge sweetened and scented with nutmeg.
Serves 4 · Prep 10 min · Cook 20 min · Difficulty: easy
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Côte d’Ivoire on a world map or globe. It sits in Africa. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Bouillie d'Arachide comes from Abidjan (Lagunes), in Côte d’Ivoire. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Bouillie d'Arachide. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Côte d’Ivoire shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Bouillie d'Arachide to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Côte d’Ivoire about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Bouillie d'Arachide, add Côte d’Ivoire to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers