East Africa

East Africa is here taken to extend from Uganda, Kenya through Tanzania to Malawi and Zimbabwe, taking in also Zambia, Burundi, and Rwanda. For the Somali Republic, see horn of Africa. angola and mozambique have their own entry, as does madagascar (malagasy Republic).

One of the most remarkable things about the food of the highland Africans of E. Africa is the almost total lack of meat in the diet, in spite of the abundant game and long tradition of breeding cattle. These were regarded as wealth, not food, and the famous Masai and related peoples lived almost entirely on milk products and the blood of the animals. Others, before the introduction of maize, lived mostly on millet, sorghum, and bananas with such greenstuffs as could be gathered.