This plant grows freely in the tropical rain forest of Africa. Its fruit, the African bush mango is eaten all across this region, from Senegal, via Nigeria, Angola to Uganda.

The Ogbono / ogbolo / etima seed, when ground and combined with vegetables and spices and cooked with fish and or meat, is used to make the popular Ogbono soup, in Nigeria, Ghana, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Fruit juice, jellies, jam, margarine, soap, dika vegetable oil and other derivatives are been made from the fruit of the wild African mango.

Its kernel, the seed continue to find the widest use and brings in the greatest income. When the dried seed is ground and used as a soup thickener, it produces a thick slippery gelatinous texture with a unique flavor. It is also rich in protein.

Like okra, it is used in preparing “draw soup” that brings in a mouth watering tang flavor to the African palate. Draw soups are popular and appetizing. They act like lubricants and help to swallow the solid food.

Ogbono seed is obtained by collecting the bush mango’s seed. The pearly white ovoid kernel that is sun dried. The kernel is then ground into a powdery form, used as the food thickener.

Ogbolo or apon or dika, etima, is perhaps the most powerful of food thickener known to Africans. Very little is needed to tremendously increase the viscosity of the soup been cooked.

Traditionally, leafy vegetables, stock fish, dried chili peppers, ground crayfish, bush meat and other assorted meat are used in preparing the soup which derives its name from this seed.

The kernels which are damp or have a greenish brown mold must be thrown away. They contain fungi that produce afla-toxins implicated in some liver diseases.