Qatar Airways has partnered with award-winning chef Dieuveil Malonga to introduce signature dishes inspired by African cuisines to passengers on selected routes, making him the first African chef to join the airline’s international culinary collaboration programme.
Announced on October 26, the partnership places Malonga chef among the culinary talents featured in the airline’s "Flavours to Fly For” programme, which brings together chefs associated with some of the world’s leading restaurants, including Michelin-starred establishments.
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Malonga, who has worked in six Michelin-starred restaurants, will draw on his travels across 48 African countries to create dishes that combine regional ingredients and traditional cooking influences with contemporary techniques.
The airline said the collaboration aims to introduce passengers to the diversity of African food and hospitality.
The menu will be available on selected Qatar Airways routes.
Malonga’s cooking follows an approach known as Afrofusion, which draws on different African culinary traditions while incorporating modern methods. His work has focused on presenting the continent’s varied food cultures to international audiences.
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Beyond the kitchen, the chef has also invested in developing Africa’s culinary industry. In 2016, he founded Chefs in Africa, a social enterprise that supports emerging culinary talent. He later established the Culinary Innovation Village scholarship programme, which has grown into a community of about 4,000 chefs and received support from the World Tourism Organisation and UNESCO.
His latest venture, Meza Malonga, is located on the shores of Lake Ruhondo in Musanze District, northern Rwanda.
The restaurant is part of a culinary campus that includes an experimental farm, a culinary training centre, and laboratories for African spices and fermentation, where ingredients and techniques are explored to develop new flavours.
Malonga’s work has attracted recognition from organisations and publications including Forbes, Travel Leisure and the World Tourism Organisation.