Ozoz Sokoh (born 1976) is a Nigerian culinary writer, food historian, recipe developer, and culinary anthropologist.[1][2][3] She has organized events around Nigerian foodways, including the first World Jollof Day in 2017.
Early life and education
Sokoh was born in 1976 in Warri,[4] on the southern coast of Nigeria. She attended the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria for 3 years, studying Urban and Regional Planning,[5] and left in 1997. She moved to the United Kingdom where she earned a degree in Geology from the University of Liverpool.[6] During her time in the UK, she began cooking Nigerian food to feel closer to home.[7] According to Sokoh, she created her first recipe in 1998 while living and going to school in the UK.[8]
Career
After graduating from the University of Liverpool, Sokoh worked as a geologist. She began a culinary blog, Kitchen Butterfly, and blogged about Nigerian food while she lived and worked in the Netherlands from 2007 to 2011.[9][5][better source needed] She developed recipes.[8]
Upon her return to Nigeria in 2011, she began researching familiar Nigerian ingredients and their uses from the perspective of culinary anthropology.[1][10][5] She researched and presented a documentary on Agege bread, a staple in Nigeria, for ‘For Africans’.[11]
In 2018 Sokoh created Feast Afrique, an online curated collection of books relating to the culinary history of West Africa and its diaspora.[12][13][8][14] This collection includes a digital library of 240+ West African and diasporic culinary and literary resources.[15][2] She has researched and written about the connections between the foods of West Africa and the foods of nations that engaged in the slave trade.[16]
She organized the first World Jollof Day in 2017.[17] The festival is held to celebrate Jollof rice, a dish that is ubiquitous in West Africa and the region's best known dish worldwide.[18] She has created ‘Eat The Book’ experiences, celebrating African food from African writing by creating the dishes at literary and arts festivals.[19][20] She was the co-organiser of Abori Food System Design Summit, which was held at Alliance Française, Lagos in 2019 and featured food exhibitions, discussions and a farmer's market.[21]
In 2020, while a Forecast mentee, Sokoh produced Coast to Coast, a documentary about the spread of West African food through the diaspora.[2][8]
Personal life
As of 2021 Sokoh lived in Ontario, Canada.[6][8] She has children.[5]
