From Nyeri to 35,000 Feet: Meet the Kenyan Chef Now Running the Biggest Kitchen in Africa’s Skies.
By the time you finish reading this story, Antony Mbugua’s team will have plated tens of thousands of meals for passengers flying across five continents.
Every time an Ethiopian Airlines jet pushes back from the gate in Addis Ababa, another few hundred meals go up with it and since January 2026, a Kenyan has been one of the top chefs responsible for what’s on your tray table.
Antony Kimotho Mbugua, a culinary professional with roots in Nyeri, Kenya, is now Executive Chef Africa at Ethiopian Airlines, based at the airline’s hub in Addis Ababa. He oversees African cuisine across one of the most demanding food operations on the planet the in-flight catering arm of Africa’s largest airline group.
The Kitchen That Never Sleeps
The scale of what Mbugua helps run is hard to picture from a seat in economy. Ethiopian Airlines’ catering facility in Addis Ababa is the largest single in-flight catering operation in Africa, occupying an 11,500-square-metre complex inaugurated in 2016 after a US$15 million investment. Its certified kitchens including dedicated halal and kosher facilities can produce up to 100,000 meals in a single day, feeding more than 240 daily departures by Ethiopian and its customer airlines, including Emirates, Etihad, and Turkish Airlines flights into Addis.
And it is growing fast. In September 2026, the airline’s catering director announced plans to more than double production capacity to 150,000 meals per day within six months, to keep pace with surging passenger traffic across the continent.
This is not a restaurant kitchen. It is a food factory with a first-class pedigree a unit that has repeatedly collected international catering awards, including PAX International’s Outstanding Food Service by a Carrier in Africa.
A Passport Stamped in Kitchens Worldwide
Mbugua did not walk into Addis Ababa from nowhere. His is a classic diaspora hustle story: over 14 years, he built his craft kitchen by kitchen across the Gulf, Asia, and the Horn of Africa stints that took him through Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Macau, before Mogadishu and eventually an executive chef role at London Cafe SAT Kitchen and Catering back home in Nyeri.
Along the way he picked up more than recipes. He works in English, Swahili, Arabic, and French exactly the multilingual toolkit you need to lead a brigade of internationally recruited chefs producing everything from Chinese and Indian to Italian, halal, kosher, and vegan menus at altitude.
That global resume is what made him the kind of chef Ethiopian Airlines went looking for when it set out to elevate its onboard dining with regional culinary leaders for Africa and beyond.
Why It Matters
For years, the story of Kenyan talent abroad has been told in hospitals, classrooms, and tech offices. Mbugua’s appointment adds a different chapter: the Kenyan palate and the Kenyan professional now shaping how millions of travelers experience African cuisine the injera, the spices, the continental flavors on the continent’s flagship carrier.
A Kenyan now helps decide what “African food” tastes like at 35,000 feet, on an airline that connects more African cities to the world than any other.
So the next time you fly Ethiopian and the meal service starts, take a second look at the tray. Somewhere behind that plate is a kid from Nyeri who cooked his way across three continents and landed at the top of the biggest kitchen in Africa’s skies.
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