From Green Leaves to Global Concerns

Green vegetables and Kenyan households. Traditional green vegetables occupy an important role in household nutrition throughout Kenya as these are the main source of vitamins and provide variety to meals otherwise consisting of maize, beans and occasionally, meat stews.  These green vegetables also provide a secondary source of proteins.  In general, green leaves and young stems are collected, washed, chopped and either steamed or boiled in combination with spices and other vegetables such as onions and tomatoes. These green vegetables have occupied an important role in traditional kitchen gardens in the rural areas throughout East Africa.  Furthermore, these vegetables are now being grown and marketed, both locally in rural areas and for urban consumption.  These vegetables are likely to become more important within urban gardens as well. 

Many consumers in Central Kenya consider kale (sukuma wiki) and Swiss chard (mistakenly referred to as spinach) to be preferred green vegetables, and it is hoped that this cookbook will provide greater recognition to the less widespread crops.  This short cookbook is dedicated to the importance of traditional green vegetables in modern Kenyan society, to formalize many of these household recipes and to introduce these plants and preparations to a wider audience of cooks and consumers.

Crop origins and farm biodiversity.  Many community-based workers and development specialists mistakenly popularize the use of “indigenous spinach” while referring to some plants that are not actually native to East Africa.  “Indigenous” plants are those that have evolved within and spread throughout an area unassisted by humans.  Some of the plants used as green vegetables are in fact indigenous, such as cowpea (Vigna unguiculata, kunde in Kiswahili), spider plant (Cleome gynandra) and crotolaria (Crotolaria ochreleuca). 

Other popular plants are “naturalized exotics”, that have originated elsewhere, but arrived in Kenya many years ago and are now widespread throughout East Africa.  Many of the most important crops in smallhold farms of Kenya belong to this category. Maize and beans, along with cassava and pumpkin originate from Tropical America and were spontaneously adopted and spread by farmers throughout the continent of Africa after introduction by early European explorers in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries.  Today many African farmers are unaware that these are not “African” crops.  Kale (Brassica oleracea ssp. accephala, sukuma wiki) and Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris ssp. cicla) are two important leafy green vegetables originating from Europe that are widely grown by East African highland farmers.  Yet another category of plants are those that are “pan-tropical” and cosmopolitan.

For example, the green vegetable solanum (Solanum nigrum) is so widespread, no one is sure of its origin.

The point of this discussion is that in this booklet, the authors are less concerned with crop origins and more with current use and potential importance.  To use “indigenous” and “traditional” as synonymous is a mistake, because it does not account for the spontaneous movement of useful plants, but from a practical perspective does not really affect how a crop may be prepared.  Farm biodiversity is emerging as an important issue, and special consideration should be given to indigenous crop plants in this regard because it is within a “Center of Origin” that the greatest genetic diversity occurs.  For this reason, we refer to the various green vegetables as indigenous, naturalized or exotic in the following section, and leave it to readers to determine whether or not they wish to attach special importance to crops that are truly indigenous to East Africa.