Dine Diaspora Creates Meaningful and Authentic Connections Through African Food Culture

Nina Oduro and Maame Boakye have usually been passionate about cultivating meaningful connections in just their communities. So when they reconnected in Washington D.C., a long time following initial assembly at a networking celebration in their indigenous Ghana, they lamented the transactional character of relationships in the politically driven funds.

“I imagine the challenge that we ended up going through was [the difficulty in] forming further connections with folks outside of expert existence and ‘let’s get lunch for an goal,’” suggests Oduro.

But D.C., in her words, is also a transient town with a pretty various population from the African diaspora and outside of. There had to be a way to provide folks from these many cultures alongside one another. 

“Food,” suggests Boakye, “was the response.”

The two women developed Dine Diaspora, a Black-gals owned and operated company based mostly in D.C., by way of which they have due to the fact created situations connecting individuals by way of African diaspora food culture. The business launched in 2014 with a Signature Evening meal featuring Ghanaian-American Eric Adjepong, a finalist on time sixteen of Bravo’s Prime Chef. Around a 3-program food of jollof rice paella with scallops and hen, beef ribs and cornbread with honey butter confit, and bofrot with peanut butter ice product, brûlée banana, and strawberry paper, Adjepong took the compact accumulating of 20 guests by the backstory of just about every dish served. That storytelling component was crucial, Oduro says, as cooks are so usually tasked with executing a person else’s vision when employed for personal events—but in this structure, there was an intimate link amongst diners and all the things on the table. 

The original meal series ended in 2018 but the pair have expanded to web hosting events like Chop Bar, an once-a-year pop-up food items competition infusing artwork and music (hold an eye on their IG for the future day), which normally takes its identify from makeshift places to eat identified in Ghana. They have also teamed up with Facebook to present Digital Diasporas, a digital series showcasing creatives from the African diaspora at the intersection of meals, journey, and way of life. Their Dish and Sip speaker collection, which operates throughout the yr in New York and D.C., provides a system for food marketplace leaders to discuss difficulties and experiences like the absence of range and disparity in compensation. 

But as Oduro and Boakye have sourced chefs for their increasing roster of functions, they’ve discovered a scarcity of gals in the talent pool—an issue they have now included into their mission.

“We did not want to be reinforcing buildings in which ladies have not been able to be centered, picked, or positioned in areas to contend with any person, significantly Black girls,” says Oduro.

They dealt with the imbalance with Black Ladies in Foods (BWIF), an initiative introduced in 2018 that “identifies, amplifies, and supports Black girls in the foodstuff and beverage business to progress their do the job and lead to a much more equitable and sustainable foods procedure,” in accordance to their website. Just about every March, BWIF honors about 30 ladies globally as aspect of Women’s Historical past Thirty day period, throughout categories such as recreation-changer, innovator, trailblazer, creator, culinarian, and amplifier. The selected honorees are celebrated in the course of the month and outside of with networking and development options.

A single of this year’s honorees is Janique Edwards, the COO and Co-Founder of EatOkra, an application that connects meals enthusiasts to extra than 11,000 Black-owned restaurants, eateries, bars, wineries, and foods vehicles across the U.S. Edwards admits that earning the award has aided with the imposter syndrome she often combats as a woman in foodstuff and tech.