of various staple foods such as yam, cassava, plantains, taro or a mix of any of those. In the French-speaking regions of Cameroon, it is called “couscous” (not to be confused with the North African dish couscous). A similar staple in the African Great Lakes region is ugali. It is usually made from maize flour (masa), and is also eaten in Southern Africa. The name ugali is used to refer to the dish in Kenya and Tanzania, ubugali in Rwanda. Closely related staples are called nshima in Zambia, nsima in Malawi, sadza in Zimbabwe, pap or vuswa in South Africa, posho in Uganda, luku, fufu, nshima, moteke, semoule, ugali and bugari in the Republic of the Congo and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and phaletšhe in Botswana. Fufu made in Ghana In Twi, fufu or fufuo means "mash or mix", a soft and doughy staple food. It is believed to originate in what is now modern-day Ghana, by the Asante, the Akuapem, the Guans, the Akyem, the Bono and the Fante people of the Akan ethnic group of Ghana and now generally accepted across the country. "Fufuo" also means "white" in Twi, and is likely derived from the whitish colour of the cassava component in Ghanaian fufu. In Ghana, it is made out of pieces of boiled cassava and/or other tubers such as plantain or cocoyam. It is mostly pounded together in a locally made wooden mortar (woduro) using a wooden pestle (woma). In between blows from the pestle, the mixture is turned by hand and water is gradually added till it becomes slurry, soft and sticky. The mixture is then formed into a rounded slab and served. With the invention of the fufu machine preparation has become much less labour-intensive. The resulting food is eaten with liquid soups (nkwan) such as light soup (nkrakra nkwan), abenkwan (palm nut soup), nkatenkwan (peanut butter soup), and abunubunu soup. Today, it also features in Beninese cuisine, Cameroonian cuisine, Guinean cuisine, Nigerian cuisine, and Togolese cuisine, where it is eaten with hot pepper soup, okra, or other kinds of stew. Fufu's prevalence in West African subregions have been noted in literature produced by authors from that area. It is mentioned in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, for example. Fufu was a major cuisine of the Ashanti Empire. In Ghana, fufu, also known as fufuo, is white and sticky (if plantain is