Comment On "Eating Kola": The Global Circulation of Plants from Ghana

In 1995 Edmund Abaka was alarmed to learn that both the United States Food and Drug Administration and the Saudi government had flagged kola nuts as a potentially psychoactive drug worth regulating. At that time, Abaka was in the process of researching kola in Ghana for his dissertation at York University, which would become the classic and important monograph "Kola Is God's Gift": Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives and the Kola Industry in Asante and the Gold Coast, c. 1820–1950.¹ Abaka brought a firmly Ghanaian perspective to research on the important commodity, building on the work of his mentor Paul Lovejoy, who had worked on kola in precolonial Nigeria.²

In his 1998 article for Ghana Studies, Abaka wove together research on kola to create a rich historical, cultural, and botanical survey of the masticatory incorporating his own personal investigations. Kola nuts are bitter fruits of the Cola nitida and Cola acuminata trees, chewed to release a tangy mix of volatile oils with powerful effects. As Abaka notes, kola has been of historic importance for Muslim communities who shun alcohol and yet seek out potent substances for socializing and relaxation. His research highlighted ample cultivation of kola in Ghana, especially in the Asante and Ahafo areas, where it was not so much consumed as prepared for trade to predominantly Muslim areas in Northern Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and beyond. Today, kola is one of the rediscovered secondary products being used in supposedly healthier "colas" such as the recently launched all-herbal Pepsi and Jolt. Cultivation of large-scale commercial kola is now possible in many areas outside West Africa.

Abaka's research has been significant to my own thinking about the circulation of healing plants in African societies, particularly his analysis of the diffusion of plants and knowledge.³ He has been one of the main authors researching the rise and fall of kola, amplifying our understanding of the surprising history of a product that at one point was used in medicine and soft drinks and might have been as significant to global trade as coffee or even coca, had synthetic alternatives to caffeine not become more cost-effective in the early twentieth century.⁴ In this key article for Ghana Studies, he emphasized that people from the West Africa region who were enslaved in the Caribbean requested access to kola nuts. He cites records from as early as the 1630s of traders from Guinea who brought kola plants from the Gold Coast directly to Jamaica where it is now established. With the circulation of people, plants followed, although he also emphasized the "counterdistinction" with respect to how the plant might be used in new sites. Like the Ghanaian botanist Edward Ayensu, who has delved into the value of economic plants within the Black Atlantic, Abaka takes Ghana as his center and compass when comparing ethnobotanical uses elsewhere.⁵

It is interesting to note that since 1995, the regulation of kola in the United States has actually been mild when compared to the regulation of a number of the other plants that Abaka notes were on the FDA's radar at the time. Kola, unlike khat (qat), for instance, remains readily available in African Caribbean grocery stores across the United States. From Boston, to Oakland, to Austin where I now teach, I have frequently procured both the red and the more sacred white nuts to use in my teaching and presentations.⁶ Kola is usually kept behind the counter, given its high value, and at least in Austin is often out of stock, requiring close communication with the owners of my preferred "Ghana shop" to check in on delivery schedules. I pick up the kola wrapped in moist towels with grains of paradise in dry plastic bags, telling audience members of the latter's purported aphrodisiac powers and patented use to treat impotence after they have sampled my wares.

The continuing lack of knowledge of Africa's healing plants could be read as a boon for small-scale sellers in the United States. Awareness of the...