This paper examines students' food perspectives in three rapidly diversifying contemporary contexts: a university setting in Kigali, Rwanda where students help to prepare Chinese dumplings; a school garden and canteen in Nairobi, Kenya where students jostle for bowls of beans and rice; and a fast-food restaurant in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where wealthy students sometimes eat. In interpreting these settings, the paper contrasts students' food perspectives with the work conducted in these countries by the United Nations World Food Program. The work draws on a theoretical literature on food as symbolising social relations to argue that the WFP might deal with food more complexly in these countries by building and expanding on students' already astute and complex food perspectives.