Togo Launches 4th FESMA to Celebrate African Gastronomy

Culture

vendredi, 08 août 2025 08:49

Togo Launches 4th FESMA to Celebrate African Gastronomy

(Togo First) - • 4th International Festival “La Marmite” runs 6–10 August in Lomé, focusing on women’s role in agriculture and food.
• Around 500,000 visitors expected; spotlight on local rice and traditional drink “Sodabi.”
• Event aims to make Lomé a capital of African gastronomy.

Togo opened the fourth edition of its international culinary festival “La Marmite” (FESMA) on August 6 in Lomé, promoting Togolese and African gastronomy.

Launched in 2022, the week-long event gathers restaurateurs, farmers, processors and food industry players to showcase the country’s culinary wealth and the full “farm-to-fork” value chain. The 2025 edition focuses on “Women, Agriculture and Food,” highlighting the crucial yet often overlooked role of women in agriculture, local cuisine and domestic economies in Africa, particularly in Togo.

“The FESMA approach is to create an original and unifying cultural event of reference in Togo, registered on the international agenda, and to make Lomé the capital of African gastronomy,” said festival commissioner Jean-Paul Agboh-Ahouélété. He noted the involvement of the Union of Chefs and Cooks of Togo (UCCT) and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI-Togo) in organising this edition.

FESMA 2025 will showcase signature dishes from Togo’s five economic regions. Two products will take centre stage: local rice, now a strategic priority, and “Sodabi,” a once-stigmatised traditional drink that is increasingly popular.

Organisers expect about 500,000 visitors by the festival’s close on August 10.

This article was initially published in French by Octave A. Bruce

Edited in English by Ange Jason Quenum

REFORMS OVERVIEW

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At the fifteenth position, worldwide, and first in Africa, under the Starting a Business index of the 2020 Doing Business ranking, Togo sustains its reformative dynamics with more reforms….

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