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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Ghana
GhanaAfrica · This week's dish comes from Greater Accra
About Ghana
Ghanaian cooking is built on starchy staples, fufu, banku, kenkey, paired with richly flavored soups and stews thickened with groundnut or palm nut. Jollof rice, red-red bean stew, and grilled tilapia with shito pepper sauce define its bold, warming plates.
Ghana's fermented staples are not interchangeable. Banku is corn dough with cassava dough worked into it, kenkey is corn dough alone, wrapped in husks or leaves and steamed, and Ga kenkey is noticeably more sour than the Fante version. Shito, the black chilli condiment set beside them, carries dried fish and shrimp as well as heat.
Most eating out happens in a chop bar, the informal southern eating house where chop is Ghanaian pidgin for eat. A few dishes are cooked in quantity each morning, fufu, banku, konkonte or rice balls, each with the soup that belongs to it, and they are served in local earthenware bowls to be eaten on the spot.
The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.
This week's dish: Nkate Cake
A crunchy peanut brittle bound in dark caramel, a popular Ghanaian street sweet sold in cut slabs.
Serves 12 · Prep 10 min · Cook 15 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 Ghana 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. Nkate Cake comes from Greater Accra, in Ghana. 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 Nkate Cake. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Ghana shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Nkate Cake to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Ghana about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Nkate Cake, add Ghana 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