African Women’s Museum
Mama Mboga.
Mama Mboga which literally means ‘mother vegetable’ is African Women’s Museum’s flagship project. It traces the knowledge that has been passed from mother to daughter about plants and growing through generations - sustaining body, mind, and soul
It describes the incredible knowledge of the women who grow crops, are expert foragers, who sell their produce by roadsides, and in markets while using vegetables as food, medicine and to take care of their households.
Yet far away from commercial agriculture what is often overlooked is the expertise that women have about the vegetables and herbs that they nurture. A study carried out in West Africa found that mothers in Benin and Gabon found that they had extensive ethnobotanical knowledge. They knew and used over 400 different species of plants to treat their children's health issues
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Plant
Women grow 70% of the food that is produced on the African continent and make up about half of all small holder farmers. If you have eaten green beans from Kenya or tomatoes from Morocco - they most likely passed through a woman’s hands.
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Nourish
The traditional crops that African women have grown and forged are nutritious and climate resilient. Knowing how to work with these plants is a gift from the past that will go on to save our future.
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Grow
Using visual arts and poetry and grounded in research, Mama Mboga is a project that works to record, document and archive this wisdom for present and future generations. Traversing both the rural and urban, Mama Mboga asks African women about this chain of knowledge and what they would like to share for the generations to come.
