Another taster typed on my phone and posted while the internet gods are in a good mood. True to its name it brings you a snack straight from the streets of Bamako… or Lagos… or Accra… or even Salvador de Bahia:
Akara: the snack that conquered the Atlantic world
These little morsels made from black-eyed beans have travelled all over West Africa and beyond, to Brazil, where they are especially well known in Bahia.
And it’s not just the food that has traveled. Its name as well has come along. Said to originate in Yoruba, where the bean fritters are called àkàrá, they are called by the name akara in Ghana, Togo, Mali, Senegal, The Gambia… and as acarajé in Brazil.
So feasting on this snack in land-locked Bamako, hundreds of kilometres from the Atlantic, connects me with food stalls across the Atlantic world.
whyafricanlanguages.org 
Interesting! I’ve personally never encountered the word in West Africa yet; I imagine it’s likely been right under my nose and I’ll run into it next time 🙂
It only shows up once in the written Bambara corpus which makes me feel slightly less bad for not knowing of it:
http://maslinsky.spb.ru/bonito/run.cgi/first?iquery=akara&corpname=corbama-net-non-tonal&corpus-search-form=true
Bon appétit!
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I think Akara are relatively recent in inland West Africa. There are other types of bean fritters in Mali such as sofurufuru, which use fewer condiments, so Akara is probably a food fashion that spread just like Alloko or Attieké.
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