Food · Central African Republic
Central African Republic: Food and the National Dish
A cassava paste eaten with a leafy or peanut-based sauce, river fish from the Ubangi, and a food culture shaped by one of the world's least documented cuisines
By Worldlore Editorial · 16 September 2026
A cuisine of the Congo Basin, thinly documented abroad
The Central African Republic's food shares its foundations with much of the wider Congo Basin: cassava, both as a root pounded into a starchy paste and as leaves cooked down into a sauce, forms the backbone of most meals, filled out with river fish, groundnuts (peanuts) and, in rural and forested areas, bushmeat. Decades of conflict and instability have left the country among the least documented culinarily of any in this project, so what follows describes the honest basics rather than a long, settled tradition of named national dishes.
The everyday staple: gozo and its sauces
Gozo, a stiff cassava paste, is the everyday starch, eaten by hand and dipped into whichever sauce a household has prepared. Ngunza, made from pounded cassava leaves cooked down with palm oil, and kanda, a peanut-based sauce often cooked with meat, are the two most common accompaniments — close relatives of dishes found under different names right across Central Africa, from Angola's kizaka to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's saka-saka.
What rounds out the table
Fish from the Ubangi River, which forms much of the country's southern border, is an important protein source in riverside communities. Rice and plantain both appear as alternative starches to gozo, and groundnuts are used both as a snack and as the base for sauces. Palm wine is the traditional drink, alongside locally brewed beer.
Eating as a traveller
The Central African Republic has very limited tourism infrastructure, and ongoing instability in parts of the country means that most travel is tightly restricted; food options for visitors are correspondingly limited outside Bangui. Vegetarians can rely on cassava, rice and groundnut-based dishes, though sauces are often cooked with meat or fish. Tap water is not safe to drink; stick to bottled or boiled water where available.
What to take from the table
Gozo with a leaf or peanut sauce is the honest, everyday answer to how most people in the Central African Republic eat — simple food, shaped by the same cassava-growing tradition found across the wider Congo Basin, cooked under considerably harder circumstances than in most of the other countries in this series.