Dawadawa
Also known as soumbala, sumbala, netetou, netetu, iru, daddawa
Quick answer
The fermented seed of the African locust bean tree, and the savoury backbone of cooking across the West African savanna: a boiled, bland legume turned pungent, ammoniacal and deeply savoury by a few days of alkaline fermentation. It seasons soups and sauces the way fish sauce or miso seasons elsewhere, and it smells as strongly as either.
- Tastes of
- savoury, pungent, ammoniacal, fermented, umami
- Heat
- Scoville does not apply
- If you have none
- MSG — see the limits
Other names
What this spice is called elsewhere, and where the translation is not clean.
daddawa
Hausa — Northern Nigeria and Niger
The source of the English "dawadawa", which in northern Ghana names the same product. The word now also covers soybean ferments made the same way, so a packet labelled dawadawa is not always locust bean.
iru
Yoruba — Southwest Nigeria
Not to be confused with ogiri, a different Nigerian ferment made from oilseeds such as melon or castor seed.
soumbala
Bambara and Dioula — Mali, Burkina Faso
netetou
Wolof — Senegal
Flavour and aroma
Intensely savoury and slightly bitter, with a lingering fermented depth. In a finished soup it tastes less of itself than of meat or stock.
Strong, pungent and ammoniacal, with a deep savoury character — the smell of protein breakdown by Bacillus, and chemically a relative of natto. Much of the ammonia cooks off in the pot; the savouriness stays.
Dark brown to black seeds, often pressed into balls or cakes.
Soft, sticky seeds when moist; hard, crumbly balls or cakes when dried.
Heat
Pungency scale: none — this spice is not pungent
No heat. The pungency is of smell, not of the chilli or pepper kind.
- Free amino acids — Released from seed protein by bacterial proteases; the source of the savouriness that makes dawadawa a seasoning.
- Ammonia — The sharp smell of the fresh product, and the reason the fermentation turns alkaline.
Pairings
Ranked by how well established the combination is, with the reason and the caveats attached.
Foods
Okra
ClassicOkra soups across northern Nigeria and northern Ghana are seasoned with dawadawa, which supplies the savoury depth that meat would in a richer soup. The okra carries the body; the dawadawa carries the flavour.
How: In okra soup; In leaf soups eaten with tuwo
Add alongside: Bird's eye chilli, Onion
- Add it early so the ammonia cooks off
Spinach
ClassicEfo riro, the Yoruba leaf stew, is defined by iru fried in palm oil with onion and pepper before the greens go in. Leaves are lean and grassy, and the fermented bean gives them the savoury backbone.
How: In efo riro
Add alongside: Onion, Bird's eye chilli
Goat
GoodNorthern Ghanaian and Hausa soups with meat are seasoned with dawadawa as a matter of course. Goat stands up to its pungency where a milder meat would be overwhelmed.
How: In meat soups and stews
Add alongside: Ginger, Bird's eye chilli
If you have no dawadawa
What to use instead, and — more usefully — where each replacement stops working.
MSG
SituationalMSG, or a stock cube, supplies the savouriness of dawadawa and nothing of its aroma. The soup will be savoury and will not taste fermented — which is exactly the change that has happened in many West African kitchens as cubes replaced the ferment.
| Flavour | Aroma | Colour | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|
| partial | unrelated | different | n/a |
Works for
- Supplying savoury depth in a soup or stew
Does not work for
- Efo riro and other dishes where iru’s smell is part of the dish
- Anyone cooking to reproduce the traditional flavour
Cuisine: A modern substitution many cooks already make; the dish loses its fermented identity.
Preparation and use
Crumble or pound a small piece and add it early, frying it in the oil with onion or dissolving it into the liquid, so that the ammonia cooks off before the dish is served. A little goes a long way.
A condiment for soups and sauces across West Africa: in northern Nigerian leaf and okra soups, in Yoruba efo riro, and in the sauces of the Sahel. Used as a savoury base in the way fish sauce, shrimp paste or miso are used elsewhere.
- boiling — Crumbled into a soup or sauce early and simmered, which drives off much of the ammonia and leaves the savouriness in the liquid.
- frying — Fried in palm oil with onion at the start of a stew such as efo riro.
- grinding — Dried balls are pounded or ground before use.
What changes it, and why
What drying, heat, crushing or time does to the compounds behind the flavour.
Fermenting
How does a bland boiled bean become dawadawa?
Seed protein → Free amino acids, peptides and ammonia
The boiled, dehulled locust bean seeds are heaped, covered and left for a few days, during which Bacillus bacteria — chiefly Bacillus subtilis and its relatives — dominate. Their enzymes break the seed protein down into peptides and free amino acids, including glutamate, and release ammonia, which pushes the pH up well into the alkaline range. The same fermentation, on different seeds, makes Nigerian ugba, Burkinabé bikalga, Nepali kinema and Japanese natto. It is the opposite of the acid fermentations behind most pickles, and the high pH is also what keeps most spoilage organisms out.
A seed with almost no flavour becomes intensely savoury — the free amino acids supply umami — and powerfully pungent and ammoniacal, a smell that softens greatly once it is cooked into a soup.
Use dawadawa as a savoury base, crumbled or pounded into a soup or stew early enough that it cooks through, where it does the work fish sauce or miso does elsewhere; the raw ammonia note is not the flavour of the finished dish. A stock cube supplies the savouriness and none of the aroma, which is why it has replaced dawadawa in many kitchens and does not taste the same.
Storage and freshness
| Form | Good for | Conditions | Fridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh | Not established | Refrigerated, well wrapped — the smell travels. | Yes |
| Dried whole | 3–12 months (typically 6 months) | Cool, dry and sealed. | No |
It should smell strongly fermented and savoury. Visible fuzzy mould, or a smell that has turned putrid rather than cheesy, means it has spoiled.
- Fuzzy mould
- A putrid rather than savoury smell
- Sliminess in the dried form
- Continued fermentation and spoilage in the moist form
- Mould if the dried form takes up moisture
Quality is not the same as safety
Dawadawa is supposed to smell strong; that is not spoilage. Mould on a dried cake, or a moist product left warm for days, is a safety matter rather than a quality one and should be discarded.
Forms
These forms differ enough to need separate answers: treating them as interchangeable produces a dish that is wrong.
Moist fermented seeds
Soft, sticky seeds straight from fermentation, as iru is usually sold in southwest Nigeria.
Dried balls or cakes
Fermented seeds pressed and sun-dried to keep; the form that travels.
Commonly confused with dawadawa
Direct comparisons, each with the difference that actually changes what you cook.
Botany
The locust bean or néré tree. Soybean versions made the same way are a different plant and are not covered by this profile.
Fabaceae
The legume family. The seed is a bean, which is why the fermentation behaves like the fermentation of soybeans into natto.
The seeds, fermented. The yellow pulp around them in the pod is eaten separately and is not part of this product.
A spreading savanna tree with ball-shaped red flower heads and long brown pods holding seeds in a sweet yellow powdery pulp. It is left standing when savanna is cleared for farming, precisely because of what its seeds and pulp are worth.
Commonly confused with
The modern competitor in the same role. Both supply savouriness; only dawadawa supplies the aroma, so a dish seasoned with a stock cube instead is savoury without tasting of the ferment.
How it is grown
The plant, how it is propagated and farmed, what threatens the crop, and where it is produced now. Crop diseases here are plant health, not food safety.
The seeds of the African locust bean, taken from long pods where they lie in a sweet yellow powdery pulp. Dawadawa is those seeds fermented. The tree is protected when savanna is cleared for farming, for its seeds and pulp.
Where it comes from and how it is made
The Sudanian and Guinean savanna belt of West Africa, from Senegal to Nigeria and beyond.
- Nigeria (The north) — major producer. Northern Nigeria alone produces on the order of two hundred thousand tonnes of seed a year.
- Burkina Faso — major producer
- Mali — major producer
- Ghana (The north) — major producer
- Senegal — notable producer
The pods are picked in the dry season and the seeds separated from the pulp.
- First boiling — The seeds are boiled for a very long time — up to a day.Why: To soften the hard seed coat.
- Dehulling and cleaning — The seed coats are rubbed off and washed away.
- Second boiling — The cotyledons are boiled again, for half an hour to two hours.Why: To cook the seed and reduce the competing microbes before fermentation.
- Fermentation — The seeds are heaped, covered and left to ferment spontaneously for a few days. Bacillus species dominate.Why: Protein breakdown: this is the step that makes the product, and the aroma and savouriness appear only here.
- Finishing — Sold moist, or pounded, shaped into balls or cakes and sun-dried for keeping; salt or ash is sometimes added.
Not planted as a crop so much as kept: trees are protected in farmland across the savanna and harvested for pods.
Savanna with a long dry season.
Processing steps it goes through
Primary processing
Alkaline seed fermentation
It also goes through cleaning.
Fermentation
Dawadawa, iru and soumbala
Alkaline fermentation · Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Other West African countries · also iru, soumbala, soumbara, fermented African locust bean
The seeds of the African locust bean, Parkia biglobosa, cleaned and sorted, boiled, dehulled and then left to ferment. The same kind of seasoning is made in West Africa from other protein-rich seeds, and the names differ by country: iru or dawadawa in Nigeria and Ghana, soumbala or soumbara elsewhere in the region.
In iru from producers and markets across Nigeria, DNA profiling of 16 samples found bacteria related to Bacillus subtilis as the one consistent presence, alongside relatives of Staphylococcus vitulinus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Morganella morganii, Bacillus thuringiensis, Tetragenococcus halophilus and others. Culturing gave counts of 10⁶ to 10⁷ CFU/ml and 280 isolates, dominated by B. subtilis and B. amyloliquefaciens, with members of the Bacillus cereus group among them. Sequencing of dawadawa from six communities in Ghana likewise found Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Lactobacillus as the main genera and B. subtilis the most abundant species, with home-made samples more diverse than commercial ones. All of this describes spontaneous fermentation; the Nigerian study isolated strains as candidate starter cultures but does not report one in use.
The fermentation is described as spontaneous, on the solid boiled seed, at ambient temperature and under uncontrolled conditions. It is alkaline: the pH rises as proteins are broken down extensively to peptides, amino acids and ammonia, and that rise favours Bacillus. Market soumbala in northern Côte d’Ivoire had a pH of about 6 and a moisture content of 20 to 24.7 per cent as paste, 7.3 to 9.3 per cent as powder and 8.6 to 10.7 per cent as granules.
The fermented seeds are used as a flavouring condiment across West African cooking, and are sold as whole fermented seeds, paste, granules and powder.
Members of the Bacillus cereus group were among the bacteria cultured from Nigerian iru, and the DNA profiles included relatives of Morganella morganii and staphylococci; the authors argue from this for controlled fermentation and good manufacturing practice. In 54 market samples of soumbala from Korhogo, aerobic mesophilic counts of 6.17 to 8.38 log cfu/g exceeded the standard the authors applied, while coliforms, moulds and yeasts were below it; the powder was the most contaminated form. Those authors note that the powder is often used without cooking and advise that soumbala be added during cooking.
What goes into it
- Fermented: African locust bean seeds (Parkia biglobosa) (Boiled and dehulled before fermenting. The catalogue holds the fermented seasoning, not the raw seed.)
Organisms studies found, and how
- Bacillus and its relatives: Bacillus subtilis — reported as dominant, grown in culture and found by sequencing. Sixteen samples of iru from producers and markets across Nigeria: the one consistent presence in the DNA profiles and, with B. amyloliquefaciens, most of 280 isolates. Sources: Combination of culture-independent and cult… (Results) Bacillus cereus group — detected, grown in culture. Among the isolates cultured from the same Nigerian iru. Sources: Combination of culture-independent and cult… (Results) Bacillus — reported as dominant, found by sequencing. Dawadawa from six communities in Ghana, with Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Lactobacillus as the other main genera. Sources: Microbial Diversity, Nutritional Compositio… (Abstract)
What is not established: The Ghanaian and Ivorian studies were read in the abstract and conclusions only. High counts of bacteria are expected in a product made by bacterial fermentation, so a total count above a general standard is not in itself evidence of a hazard. None of the sources read measured aroma compounds, toxins or biogenic amines, so nothing is recorded here about flavour chemistry.
Buying and quality
Dried balls rather than powder, where you have the choice: a powder is harder to judge for mould and for what it was made from.
- From a West African grocer, dried in balls or cakes, or moist and chilled.
- Check the label or ask: soybean dawadawa is common and is a different product — and contains soy.
- A strong fermented smell is correct; mould is not.
History and trade
A seasoning of the West African savanna old enough that the tree it comes from has shaped the landscape: farmers across the region leave locust bean trees standing when they clear land, and the fermented seed is traded long distances and across borders.
An important local and regional trade: the dried or fermented seed is often carried far from where it is made, and across national borders, throughout West Africa.
Culture
Recorded by tradition rather than merged into one narrative — these are genuinely different practices.
Hausa and the northern savanna
Among the Hausa.
Daddawa is the seasoning of northern Nigerian soups — the leaf soups and okra soups eaten with a stiff porridge — where it does the savoury work that meat does in richer dishes.
- In leaf and okra soups
- With tuwo
Also documented among the Hausa: Suya spice.
Yoruba
Among the Yoruba.
Iru is the defining seasoning of efo riro, the spinach-type leaf stew, and of several other soups, fried with palm oil and onion at the start.
- In efo riro
- Fried in palm oil at the start of a stew
Also documented among the Yoruba: Ogiri.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal
Soumbala and netetou season the sauces of Sahelian West African cooking and are a household staple, made by women and sold in markets across the region.
- In sauces for rice and millet
- Made and sold by women
What it is called
- Hausa: daddawa
- Yoruba: iru
- Bambara: soumbala
- Wolof: netetou
What we do not know
Published openly. A gap we have named is more useful than a gap we have filled with plausible prose.
Not yet established for dawadawa:
- Propagation
- Archaeological evidence
- Historical timeline
- Ceremonial use
- Traditional medicinal context
- Regulatory limits
- Traditional uses