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 cuisine little documented abroad
By Worldlore Editorial · 30 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's cooking little documented abroad, and it has no widely recognised national dish, so what follows describes the everyday basics.
The everyday staple: gozo and its sauces
Gozo, a stiff paste made from cassava flour, is the everyday starch, eaten by hand and dipped into whichever sauce a household has prepared. A sauce of pounded cassava leaves and sauces thickened with peanuts are among the most common accompaniments, alongside kanda, spicy beef meatballs — the cassava-leaf sauce is a close relative of dishes found under different names across Central Africa, such as Angola's kizaka.
What rounds out the table
Fish from the Ubangi River, which forms much of the country's southern border, such as capitaine (Nile perch) caught at Bangui, is an important protein source in riverside communities, where meat can be scarce. 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 and banana wine are traditional drinks, alongside sorghum beer and locally brewed lagers such as Mocaf.
Eating as a traveller
The Central African Republic has very limited tourism infrastructure, and because of the armed conflict under way since 2013 most governments advise against all travel to the country; 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 in one of the poorest countries in the world.