Netherlands-based Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNi) recently conducted a reasearch on food products being sold in shops and supermarkets in Tanzania. The study was done in collaboration with the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC). Our reporter, Zelidya Ladislaus held a Question-and-Answer interview with Katherine Pittore, the head of policy and communication at Access to Nutrition Initiative and Bo-Jane Woods, the partnership manager at ATNi.
So why now? What has brought you to Tanzania?
We choose Tanzania as a focus country for several reasons:
1. The growing rate of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – for example in Tanzania the prevalence of diabetes is 10 percent of adults, one of the highest prevalence on the continent.
2. The rapid growth of modern retail – sales of “Ultra-processed” packaged foods grew by more than 300 USD million over six years, rising from USD 1,913.9 million in 2017 to USD 2,269.3 million in 2023.
3. Overweight and obesity are already high, affecting more than 25 percent of the population, and the growth in these conditions has been increasing year-on-year (Tanzania | World Obesity Federation Global Obesity Observatory)
4. Tanzania has a window of opportunity to implement effective policies to create healthier food environments, however there is still a gap in terms of policy development.
Key gaps identified include policies around salt reduction, trans-fat reduction, product reformulation, or banning marketing of unhealthy foods to children.
5. Tanzania also has a stock market. ATNi believes investors are one of the levers that can be used to incentive companies to deliver healthier options.
Investors in publicly traded companies can push the companies to disclose more data about the healthiness of their product portfolios, as well as the percentage sales from healthy and unhealthy products, and use this information to inform their investment decision
Tell me a little bit about ATNi’s history
ATNi was established almost 12 years ago.
ATNi is fully independent from the food and beverage industry and aims to transform markets for nutrition.
The first product produced by ATNi , and which is still produced every three years, is the global access to nutrition index, which ranks the 30 largest global food and beverage companies on their corporate practices (things like if the company has a policy to increase the sales of nutritious foods, or if their CEO’s renumeration is tied to achieving the nutrition strategy, as well as things such as having policies around workforce nutrition, reformulation or marketing to children).
In addition to looking at what companies say they do, ATNi also evaluates what companies are actually doing in terms of their product portfolio.
Here we look at all the products produced by a specific food and beverage manufacturer and evaluate them according to what is known as a nutrient profile model (NPM) to establish how healthy or unhealthy the overall product portfolio is.
We hope that companies themselves can use this data can increase the percentage of sales from healthier products compared to less healthy products, as well as by investors to inform their investment decisions.
Policy makers can also use the data to see where voluntary industry regulations are not going far enough and where government policies are needed.
Your theory of change is about transforming markets – how will this report help change the food environment in Tanzania
The East Africa Market assessment provides an objective snapshot of what companies are doing, and what they’re not doing, to support access to affordable nutritious food for all Tanzanians.
Our hope is that with this information companies can start to improve their practices.
Each company is given a scorecard looking at their own performance and suggesting areas of improvement. In addition, we suggest key policy recommendations that would support creating an enabling environment which prioritizes nutritious food.
How big a threat are NCDs like obesity and diabetes in Tanzania?
Non-Communicable Diseases are increasing throughout the continent including in Tanzania. That’s not to say that micronutrient deficiencies, and stunting are solved problems.
Tanzania is now battling a triple burden of malnutrition where policies to support those who are not receiving enough adequate nutrition must be implemented in combination with policies support healthier diets and reductions in nutrients of concerns such as sodium and saturated fats.
Healthier food environments, which increase access to nutrient dense foods at affordable prices are critical to solving the triple burden of malnutrition in Tanzania.
How would you characterize food and drink company behavior?
We found that nutrition is a fairly new topic for many of the Tanzanian and East African headquartered companies that we assessed.
Few companies had policies in place around corporate nutrition practices, commitments to sharing the percentage of their portfolios from healthier products, or commitments to stop marketing to children.
While some of the international companies assessed did have strategies at the global level, it was not clear how these were translated into the Tanzanian context.
We recognize that this is the first time that such an assessment has been carried out so we did not rank the companies as we do in our global index, rather we assessed the current status and put forward areas where companies could improve and suggest a road map for industry.
You assess a wide range of indicators, which do you feel policy makers should focus on?
Of course, there are many policies that are needed to create healthier food environments; however, we and others think that the first step is deciding on a nutrient profile model that can be endorsed by the government.
The Tanzanian multisectoral national nutrition plan has already highlighted The WHO AFRO model as a potential model that can be adopted.
Once the government has endorsed a specific nutrient profile model, this can be as a basis for other policies.
For example, a new profile model can be used to identify which products are suitable to be marketed to children, to inform potential front of package labeling, or to allow companies to report on sales of “healthier” products.
How do Tanzanian based companies compare to multinational companies working in Tanzina in terms of the healthiness of their portfolios?
Making a comparison is hard, because the nature of their product portfolios is often very different.
For example, many Tanzanian companies focus on dairy products which tend to be relatively healthy, compared to multinationals which are often specializing in sugar sweetened beverages or salty snacks which tend to be less healthy.
That’s not to say that Tanzanian companies are producing healthier foods per se but rather the overall portfolios are not comparable.
What’s next for ATNI in East Africa?
There are so many interesting directions that we could take this research, and data gaps:
1. This was the first time (to our knowledge) such an assessment was carried out in Tanzania. In the next iteration we would love to train a Tanzania organization so that they can carry out the assessment themselves, allowing for a regular benchmarking of company progress.
We view this assessment as a baseline, which can be used to track companies progress over time. Eventually this could also be given to the government to allow them to benchmark companies or support improved reporting and disclosures.
2. There is still so little know about consumption patterns in terms of what people are actually eating. We know that there is a growing modern retail sector, and a change in what people are buying, and this is changing people’s diets, however we do not know exactly how.
It would be great to get more data on consumption patterns, by various demographics, and how the changing retail market is leading to changes in diets, and for whom.