Tanzania Market Assessment 2025

Assess Product Healthiness, Marketing to Children, and Affordability

• Assessing which products qualify as ‘healthier’, and for global-headquartered companies to evaluate whether they are making healthier products equally available across all regions.
• Ensuring that ‘less healthy’ products are not marketed to children, using the World Health Organization’s Africa Regional Office (WHO AFRO) standards.
• Measuring the affordability and accessibility of ‘healthier’ options—especially for low-income groups.

Set Clear Targets for Healthier, Affordable Products and Responsible Marketing

• Increase sales of healthier and affordable foods and assign CEO accountability for nutrition, or Board reviews.
• Improve availability of fortified products that meet health standards and are affordable across all income groups (cont.).

• Fully align marketing practices with WHO and UNICEF standards—defining children as under 18 and restricting or limiting child-directed marketing to only healthy products through all media channels.

Disclose Nutrition Policies, Progress, and Quality Controls

• Publicly reporting on each aspect of their nutrition policies, including, for example, sales of healthier products and responsible marketing and labelling commitments.
• Clearly disclosing fortification policies and verifying that fortified products meet health standards through robust quality control.
• Ensuring back-of-pack nutrition labelling includes standardized micronutrient content.

Strengthen regional cooperation by supporting the development of East African nutrition standards to accelerate progress on healthier diets and reduce diet-related diseases.

Implement the Tanzanian National Multisectoral Nutrition Action Plan II policy actions, prioritizing:

• Development of a nationally accepted nutrition profiling model (NPM)
• Introduction of mandatory front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labelling (cont.)

• Adoption of regulations to protect children from unhealthy food and beverage advertising
• Integration of workplace nutrition interventions into national health strategies

Implement the proposed Nutrition Promotion Levy on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) without delay to reduce sugar intake, support public health.

Allocate revenue from health-related taxes (e.g., on SSBs and unhealthy foods) to fund national nutrition and health programmes.

Prioritise Investment in Companies that Demonstrate Improvements

• Support companies with transparent nutrition policies, responsible marketing, and workforce nutrition initiatives.
• Favour investees aligned with national and international standards (e.g. Codex Alimentarius, WHO/FAO).
• Invest in businesses offering healthier product portfolios that contribute to Tanzania’s public health goals.

Use Nutrition-Focused Evaluation Tools

• Apply tools like ATNi’s Investor Expectations on Nutrition, Diets, and Health to assess and guide company performance on nutrition.

Push for Global Standards in All Markets

• Encourage globally-headquartered companies to apply the same or better nutrition and health standards in Tanzania and other emerging markets as they do in mature markets.

Integrate Nutrition into Investor Reporting

• Embed nutrition considerations into reporting standards to strengthen accountability and influence.

Read full recommendations here

Methodology Development

The Corporate Profile methodology is based on ATNi’s 2024 Global Index methodology, with significant adaptations to the Tanzanian context, reducing the number of indicators from 46 to 21. This process was informed by consultations with stakeholders and experts, insights from the Tanzania Food Environment Mapping Report, literature reviews, and guidance from public health bodies.

For the Product Profile, three nutrient profiling models (NPMs) were used to assess product healthiness: the Health Star Rating (HSR), the modified HSR with micronutrients (mHSR + micronutrients) developed by ATNi and The George Institute (TGI), and the WHO AFRO model for marketing to children.

Research Approach (Data collection)

For the Corporate Profile, companies were invited to submit responses and evidence through an online platform (Probench), which was then reviewed by ATNi researchers. Non-engaging companies were assessed based on publicly available information only. The assessment does not involve on-the-ground data collection or verification of company practices beyond what is provided or publicly available.

For the Product Profile, ATNi prepared product sheets using data from sources like Innova Market Insights, which companies were then requested to review and correct. Missing nutritional data was imputed using Food Composition Tables (like the Tanzania Food Composition Table), online retail supermarket data, and global online nutrition food databases.

Key Assessment Areas

The Corporate Profile assesses companies across themes such as:

• Product Healthiness (including portfolio improvement for macronutrients, food components, micronutrients, and fortification)
• Influencing Consumers (Affordable Nutrition, Responsible Marketing, Responsible Labelling)
• Corporate Governance (Nutrition Governance, Workforce Nutrition)
• The Product Profile focuses on the nutritional quality of packaged F&B products.

Limitations

The assessment acknowledges limitations such as:

• Using a single framework for diverse companies (globally headquartered vs. Tanzanian-headquartered)
• Reliance on company commitments and self-reported performance without independent on-the-ground verification.
• Potential for incomplete representation of non-engaging companies
• Exclusion of broader corporate issues like environmental sustainability or corporate tax abuse.
• Being the first edition, it serves as a baseline and cannot analyze improvement over time yet.

The methodology emphasizes the importance of transparency and accountability from F&B manufacturers in addressing the triple burden of malnutrition in Tanzania, which includes undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and rising rates of overweight and obesity.

Read the full methodology here