Niger

Africa · This week's dish comes from Niamey

About Niger

Niger's Sahelian cuisine is built on millet and sorghum, porridges, dumplings (dambou), and fura da nono (millet balls in soured milk). Grilled meats and groundnut sauces reflect a Hausa and Fulani heritage.

Dambou is steamed couscous of millet or another grain with boiled moringa leaves, peanut and oil, and it is not made from cassava. It belongs to the Zarma and Songhai of the southwest and is festive rather than everyday. Fura da nono is the Hausa and Fulani drink-meal: millet balls crumbled into soured milk and drunk from a bowl.

Niger is mostly Sahara, with the crops and the people pressed into a southern band along the Niger river and the Nigerian border. That leaves millet and sorghum doing almost all the work, planted on a single short rainy season, and moringa growing where nothing else green will, which is why its leaves turn up as a vegetable rather than a supplement.

The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.

This week's dish: Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup)

A creamy Hausa soup of mashed pumpkin and pounded groundnuts with meat and greens, thick, mildly sweet and savoury.

Serves 4 · Prep 20 min · Cook 45 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 Niger 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. Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup) comes from Niamey, in Niger. 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 Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup). How have the people, trade routes, and history of Niger shaped what ends up on the plate there?

4. Compare Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup) to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Niger about how they make and share it?

5. After you cook Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup), add Niger 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

🍽 Open the full Miyan Taushe (Pumpkin and Groundnut Soup) recipeServings dial, dietary swaps for every table, and its own print button.

🍳 Kitchen SchoolShort lessons on the core skills the recipes lean on.

📋 More teacher resourcesThe printable passport, how to run Country of the Week, and every country page.