Visuals by Joan Encarnacion | Photo Credits: Evan Sung & Adam Bartos

As smallholder farmers in West Africa navigate their futures amidst climate change and evolving economic pressures, many are pioneering new markets for ancient grains like fonio—a crop indigenous to the region that honors tradition, promises economic growth, and fosters sustainable land stewardship.

In this Q+A, Chef Pierre Thiam, board member of IDEO.org and founder of the culinary social enterprise Yolélé, sits with our CEO, Shauna Carey, to discuss his work building a thriving ethical market for fonio. Together, they explore how we can design a more responsible value chain that supports sustainable food systems, dignified futures for smallholder farmers, and regenerative agriculture

This Q+A has been edited for length and clarity.

Rediscovering Fonio

Shauna Carey (IDEO.org): Pierre, you’ve spent your career bringing fonio to the global forefront. What inspired you to dedicate yourself to fonio and lost crops?

Pierre Thiam (Yolélé Foods, Teranga): It started organically in the early 90s when I was a young cook in New York City, the food capital of the world. Quickly, I realized that my world, Senegal, and the whole continent of Africa, was absent. I felt like New York’s restaurant scene was ready to be introduced to these cuisines, and I naively positioned myself to do so.

I launched a catering business, which became my first restaurant, a West African bistro in Bed-Stuy. The restaurant's success led me to my first cookbook deal. While writing recipes for Yolele!, I was constantly looking for substitutions for traditional Senegalese ingredients that my U.S. audience could access. Fonio, for example, was not readily available here or even throughout Senegal.

I wanted readers to understand where this cuisine came from, which pushed me to do further research. Eventually, I decided to build a value chain for Senegalese ingredients and food products in the American market.

Shauna: What was your relationship with fonio at this point?

Pierre: Because my mother is from the South, we grew up eating fonio. My grandparents fed it to us every time we visited them. But outside the south, you couldn’t really find it, supermarkets in Dakar did not sell it.

When I was doing research for Yolele!, I traveled across Senegal to meet food producers and growers. On one trip to Kédougou, a region in southern Senegal, I was greeted with fonio as a gesture of honor. There, I learned that this 5,000+ year-old, drought-resistant crop thrived in poor soil without the use of chemicals. Amazingly, it also restored nutrients in the topsoil. Fonio is also such a versatile grain. It’s gluten-free, it cooks in 5 minutes, and it’s delicious.

After meeting with these farmers, I was haunted that this incredible grain was not available just a few hours north in Dakar. I kept thinking about the local and global potential for fonio. Establishing a market would showcase Senegalese cuisine, give a voice to the growers who have cultivated it for generations, and change their livelihoods. It would also reward a much healthier agricultural practice.

A Seed for Cultural and Community Resilience

Shauna: I am always energized listening to you talk about how building a market for fonio has unlocked change across so many interconnected challenges. This systems-minded approach is so critical when designing sustainable solutions for some of our most intractable issues—especially climate, given that it touches everything. Often, I find that conversations around climate are falsely divorced from so many other social challenges we’re solving for.

Pierre: I like that phrase “falsely divorced,” it’s exactly right. When I look at fonio, I see it as more than a climate-smart crop; it's the lifeblood for communities, economically and culturally.

Our current global agriculture system has been hijacked by a handful of corporations that prioritize shareholder profits over people and the planet. It’s legacy of colonialism and plantation farming, contributing to a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions due to its practice of deforestation, fertilizer use and intensive monocroppping of corn, soy, rice, and wheat. This system hurts our planet, our health, and our cultures.

There are so many amazing crops like fonio across Africa that have been overlooked. When you go to cities like Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos, you only see wheat products like baguettes and croissants. There is a mentality of “West is best”. We need to shift this perspective to celebrate our traditions, culture, and food.

Prioritizing the cultivation of indigenous crops that are naturally adapted to local conditions reduces our dependence on unsustainable agricultural practices that poison the earth and require intensive water use, particularly in areas where water is scarce. Finally, diversifying our diet outside of corn, wheat, rice, and soy benefits our health.

By building a market for fonio and other indigenous grains, we can create a diverse, more resilient food system that is better for our environment and our bodies.

Finally, I’ll say that every time a crop disappears, a whole culture disappears with it. So, we’re not just selling a line of products; we’re building a system where local communities can thrive economically while preserving and celebrating their heritage.

Shauna: Can you share some specific examples of how growing a market for fonio has transformed these communities? You mentioned earlier that growing up, you couldn’t find fonio in supermarkets in Dakar. And now, you have succeeded in opening the market regionally and in the U.S. That must have been hugely impactful for farmers.

Pierre: Definitely. Historically, fonio has grown in south Senegal, the country’s poorest, and most underserved region. In Kédougou, the community I visited, there were no young people and no men. Most people had left to find work elsewhere. Since growing the market, women from these communities have become the primary beneficiaries.

Fonio has many nicknames including “the woman’s crop”. Women have always valued fonio for its nutritional benefits, serving it to newborn and postpartum mothers. They play a key role in every part of its production, from cultivation, harvesting, and processing. They maintain traditions for fonio that have been kept up for hundreds of years.

So, women often lead the cooperatives that produce and distribute fonio, which has given them access to income independent of their husbands. This financial independence has allowed them to make more decisions about their lives. For the larger community, it also means that fewer people are forced to find work elsewhere.

Lessons from Quinoa: Designing A Different Destiny for Fonio

Shauna: Quinoa is an example of another ancient grain that has been popularized and commercialized in the past 40-50 years. As you continue to design and expand the market for fonio, what lessons have you learned from the growth of superfoods like quinoa?

Pierre: We need to grow fonio, and all of these lost crops, with respect for tradition and local communities. When quinoa was introduced to the West, it was over-commercialized to the point where growers in Peru and Chile could not keep up with the demand. This led to intensive quinoa farming in places like Montana, Texas, and Ukraine. Smallholder farmers couldn’t compete and lost the crop they brought to the world.

As we create demand for fonio, we’re committed to a different path. I draw a lot from IDEO.org’s human-centered design approach to guide us through this challenge. Our focus is on the people—the growers and value chain actors, not the interests of a few corporate shareholders. True sustainability in food and agricultural systems starts from the ground up, beginning with the soil and the farmers who cultivate the crop.

Shauna: What does this look like in practice?

Pierre: Most importantly, we want to make sure that farmers and producers have the necessary infrastructure and support to meet the growing demand. Fonio processing is labor intensive, and here in particular, we have seen a lot of innovation. Sanoussi Diakité, a Senegalese engineer and teacher invented a fonio husking machine that makes processing 30 times faster. By investing in these farmers and their agricultural practices, we can protect their heritage, the environment, and their future.

I also see education as a big part of this. Educating consumers through Yolélé’s branding and marketing has allowed people to better understand the bigger picture. When we started, I ran cooking demos at Whole Foods to teach people how to cook fonio and about its history. After every demo, the fonio would sell out. We’re not only trying to compete with other products on the shelves; we’re trying to educate.

We have a proof of concept that demonstrates that sustainable, community-focused development is not only possible but profitable. This can change how global markets interact with smallholder farmers.

Shauna: Before we end, who are the key players and organizations we need to be listening to?

Pierre: In Africa, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Lost Crops Festival. It will be the first time that a large gathering of local farmers, food entrepreneurs, and decision-makers will come together to speak to the future of these lost crops.

Outside of West African food, there is Chef Sean Sherman who is an amazing Native American chef working to re-establish indigenous North American foodways. He founded the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) which mission is to promote Indigenous foodways education and to facilitate its access.