Fufu/Fufuo means "mash" in Twi (language of the Akan ethnic groups in Ghana) and is a specific staple food for the Akans in southern part of Ghana and Ivory Coast, West Africa but now commonly features in many West and Central African countries in different textures but not every doughy African foods are Fufu.
Fufuo (also means white and derived from the white color of cassava) is soft doughy swallow food made out of boiled cassava mixed with plantains or coco yams and pounded together in a mortar (waduro) with a pestle (woma) unique to the Akans and only eaten with liquid soups (nkwan) such as, Light
soup (Nkrakra nkwan), palm nut
soup,
peanut soup, Abunabun
soup (green vegetable) with meats, fishes, snails, crabs, mushrooms and okro (nkruma) on the side. Fufuo/fufu is usually served in Asanka or Ayowaa (an earthware
bowl;
black or red in color).
Right way to eat Fufu:
Take a piece of the Fufu , make a hole in it, scoop the
soup and swallow, never chew the Fufu.
In the typical Akan region in Ghana, Fufuo is mostly use but Ghanaian businesses men used only the name Fufu when they processed the authentic Fufuo/Fufu into cassava/plantains /coco
yam flour years ago and sold mainly in Ghana markets in most western countries such as
America because they couldn't pound the Fufu just they would in Ghana, as it's very noisy when pounding and it became
popular among other Africans and parts of the Caribbean and now almost every African doughy foods are being called Fufu.