Eating Insects Has Long Made Sense in Africa. The World Must Catch Up.

Scientists have long proposed insects as feed or foodstuff for animals.

But views about entomophagy differ widely: food conscious lobbies and scientists promote insects as novel foods while at the other extreme people view eating insects as crazy.

Between those two extremes are communities that have been practising entomophagy for ages.

Most edible insects are harvested from the wild. Little effort has been put into how they could be mass produced and used as a source of protein more generally.

To do this, it’s important that the biodiversity of edible insects is understood better, and that indigenous knowledge is uncovered.