The Founder
“Food is where culture begins. Before the city, before institutions, before monuments, there was a decision to tend something, to learn what it needed, to pass that knowledge to the next person. That knowledge built everything that came after it. It is disappearing. The move from community to convenience happened faster than anyone thought to stop and ask the last person who knew. I make work that puts that knowledge in the center of the room. Through food, at a table, in writing, on a stage, in a field. Each form asks the same question. Each form makes it harder to look away.”
Selassie Atadika is a chef, artist, author, and food systems strategist based in Accra. She founded Midunu in 2014 and has spent a decade making the case that African culinary knowledge is not heritage to be rescued but infrastructure to be invested in: at the table, on the page, in the gallery, and in the field. Before Midunu, she spent nearly fifteen years in United Nations humanitarian response across Africa: years that built the argument before she had language for it.
She is a TIME Earth Award recipient, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow, a Yale Global Table Fellow, a finalist for the Basque Culinary World Prize, and one of the Best Chef Awards' Top 100. Her first book, Gather and Feast, is published by St. Martin's Press in Spring 2027. Her installation work debuts at [1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, October 2026], with a national work planned for Black Star Square, Accra, in 2028. She trained inside the leading American model for this Institute as a fellow of the Stone Barns Center.
Press
For press enquiries and interviews: info@midunuinstitute.org, subject line 'Press'. High-resolution portraits and the one-page bio available on request.
Speaking
Selassie speaks internationally on food, culture, and inheritance.
Listen
Feast Forward, the podcast: conversations on the future of Africa's food heritage.