USAID Advancing Nutrition ● April 2022

What was the issue?  

Fortification is the practice of deliberately adding essential micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) in foods to improve the nutritional quality of the food and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health. As well as increasing the nutritional content of staple foods, food fortification can help to restore the micronutrient content lost during processing.

There is need to increase demand for fortified foods in Uganda. The consumer, the processor and those who make policy need to work together to make the practice of food fortification the norm. To achieve this, a strategic marketing plan that targets each of these groups is necessary.

What did S4P Group do?         

We conducted formative research with the aim of understanding the market environment around fortified foods and how they can be marketed better. To unearth barriers and motivators towards uptake of fortified foods, we conducted this formative assessment through key informant interviews and point of sale observations.

How did the S4P Group approach provide value?     

Despite, the position held by the industrial fortification programmers that there is no need for demand creation of the industrial fortified foods but rather enforcement. Through discussions with the S4P Group team, it agreed that it was important to shift from demand creation to demand protection. If fully adopted, it would imply that the industrial players to generate increased revenue from production of fortified foods which will increase their profitability.

What is the impact?   

The assessment revealed that knowledge about fortified foods among respondents is low and there are many pre-existing gaps that need to be bridged.

The formative assessment also provided insights around barriers and facilitators of food fortification, current marketing strategies being used and provided proposed solutions or strategies that can be used to market future initiatives to promote fortified foods.

As a result of the research, S4P Group was able to develop two Advocacy briefs with guidelines on how to promote food fortification. One guideline is aimed at policy makers, with strategies for public awareness and regulation. The other is aimed at the institutions where a lot of Ugandans are fed – schools, hospitals, prisons, police, and army barracks – and emphasises the effects of micronutrient deficiencies.