Selassie Atadika

Selassie Atadika is a TIME Earth Award honoree, food systems strategist, and author whose work sits at the intersection of African heritage, global sustainability, and economic justice. A Black woman who spent a decade on the frontlines of humanitarian crises with UNICEF across 40 countries, she returned to Ghana to build one of Africa’s most internationally recognized food enterprises, and has spent twenty years inside the food systems she speaks about.

As the founder of Midunu and Midunu Chocolates, she has pioneered a model where culture, community, and cuisine intersect with sustainability and economic empowerment. Her work creates economic opportunities for smallholder women farmers and producers while reshaping global perceptions of African foodways and supply chains.

A sought-after keynote speaker, Atadika has addressed audiences at the European Cocoa Association, EAT Stockholm Food Forum, Climate Week NYC, the World’s 50 Best Talks, Harvard University, and Yale University. She is a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow (2026) and Yale Global Table Fellow (2024). Her first book, "Gather and Feast," is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in 2027.

Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, CNN, New York Times, TIME magazine, and BBC. She has been named among the Top 100 Best Chefs in the World, honored with La Liste’s New Destination Champion Award, and was a finalist for the Basque Culinary World Prize.

What Atadika brings to a stage is rare: twenty years of living and working inside the food systems she talks about, combined with the intellectual rigor of someone who has had to explain those systems to UN agencies, development banks, luxury brands, and heads of state. She does not describe Africa from the outside. She translates it from within, with the precision of a strategist and the instinct of a storyteller.