Wars in post-colonial Africa, like in other places across the world, were not only fought with guns, ammunitions, and bombardments but also with strategies of starvation. Starvation as a military strategy has been employed by various groups throughout history, with the primary intent of forcing an enemy to surrender or retreat. These strategies take diverse forms, especially through scorched-earth methods such as the burning of farmlands, the poisoning or contamination of food storage or drinking water, or the outright blockade or bombardment of markets, food networks, foodways, and systems, including airways, waterways, roadways, ports, and airports. While various studies have addressed starvation as a strategy of war, especially as implemented by victors,[i] the question remains: how have victims of war, especially civilians, survived in the face of deliberate starvation? In many instances, civilians voluntarily or forcefully give up their food to soldiers as their contribution to war efforts, making them the chief casualties of war starvation.

In the case of the Biafran War, civilians readily reinvented their nutrition in the face of scarcity. Between 1967 and 1970, the Biafra Republic defended itself from the onslaught of the British-Soviet-US backed Nigerian Army. Historian Egodi Uchendu found that children between10 and 18 hunted lizards and rats as a source of food,[ii] while various Christian and humanitarian organizations smuggled stock-fish—otherwise known as dried codfish, which is today consumed by Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria, former citizens of Biafra—to make up for their deficiency in protein.[iii] Before this, neither lizards nor codfish were commonly featured on Igbo menus. While lizards as a source of protein have largely fallen out of use, codfish has remained a national food source among the Igbo, serving as a reminder of how they survived the war.

As the Biafran population faced blockades that restricted access to crude oil depots in Port Harcourt—essential for powering their war machines—they turned to processing oil palm as an alternative fuel source for warplanes and armored tanks. This shift, however, further depleted the region’s food reserves, as oil palm was also a dietary staple. Consequently, survivors who depended on oil palm for preparing soups had to carefully ration its use, giving rise to what became known as “Win-the-War” soups. These soups were characteristically thin and watery, having little protein, with salt often extracted by boiling already-salted codfish, commonly referred to as stockfish. Remarkably, the legacy of “Win-the-War” soup endured among Igbo families long after the conflict’s end. Whenever a younger generation prepares a poorly made, watery soup, older family members—who lived through the war—often tease them, jokingly calling it “Win-the-War” soup. Thus, food provides a lens through which older Igbo generations recount tales of the war, weaving personal and collective memory into everyday life.

The stories point to the fact that an exploration of how civilian populations sourced and invented new foods and reinvented the old during starvation-ravaged conflicts is long overdue. While studies on humanitarianism in war are abundant, the ingenuity of those facing systematic starvation—how they changed their diets and adapted to scarcity—remains underexplored. Indeed, the history of Biafra is not solely a narrative of bombardment and famine. It is also a story of widespread stockfish consumption, shifting gender roles in trade and breadwinning, childhood experiences tied to rodent hunting, and the broader intersections of food sourcing and culinary innovation. These elements reveal a resilient population adapting to extraordinary circumstances, crafting new recipes and survival strategies amid adversity.
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[i] George Alfred Mudge, “Starvation as a Means of Warfare,” International Lawyer 4, no. 2 (1970): 228, https://scholar.smu.edu/til/vol4/iss2/3; Bridget Conley and Alex de Waal, “The Purposes of Starvation: Historical and Contemporary Uses,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 17, no. 4 (2019): 699-722.
[ii] Egodi Uchendu, “Recollections of Childhood Experiences during the Nigerian Civil War,” Africa 77, no. 3 (2007): 408. Uchendu’s is one of few studies that capture some strategies adopted by the civilian population, especially women and children, to survive economic blockades and the subsequent food shortages they create.
[iii] Robert E. Gribbin, “Two Relief Crises: Biafra and Sudan,” Africa Today 20, no. 3 (1973): 49; Fiona Bateman, “Ireland and the Nigeria-Biafra War: Local Connections to a Distant Conflict,” New Hibernia Review 16, no. 1 (2012): 48.
Nnaemeka Enemchukwu earned his bachelor’s degree in History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He went on to complete a master’s degree in History and Strategic Studies at the University of Lagos and is currently pursuing a second master’s in History at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His research interests span the economic, migration, labor, and social histories of West Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries. His scholarship has been published in notable outlets, including the Journal of Military History (Nigeria Defence Academy), the Nigerian Forum (Nigerian Institute of International Affairs), and the African Studies Review (Cambridge University Press).