By Kilimokwanza

There is a tendency, when discussing poor nutrition in Africa, to frame the problem as one of individual choice: people eat badly because they do not know better, or because they lack the discipline to eat well. The research does not entirely support this view.

A research brief from the CGIAR Science Program on Better Diets and Nutrition, titled Food Environments in Arusha and Kilimanjaro, has mapped the built food environment across the two northern Tanzania regions in granular detail: a census of 1,184 retail outlets across 15 markets and 108 additional retail outlets, followed by bi-monthly in-depth assessments between September 2023 and January 2025. The data it has produced is a portrait of a food system that, structurally, does not make healthy eating easy.

What the Census Found

The starkest finding is about vendor composition. Only 22% of vendors in the study area sold fruit. Only 33% sold vegetables. By contrast, 60% of vendors sold processed and packaged foods, and 65% sold fried foods and snacks.

Read those numbers again. In the markets where women in Arusha and Kilimanjaro buy their food, fried foods and snacks are three times more available than fruit. This is not a dietary preference. It is a market structure, and it is one that systematically steers consumers away from the foods that health requires.

The Open-Air Market Problem

Open-air markets are where the widest variety of healthy food can be found. Almost all food groups that make up a healthy diet are available in them, and most consumers visit on a weekly basis. But they are often far from households, and many consumers face serious transport challenges reaching them.

The research, which included a baseline household survey of approximately 2,600 women of reproductive age conducted between October 2023 and January 2024, as well as photovoice interviews with 20 women in two villages during Summer 2024, and shop-along visits in January through March 2024, documents the lived experience behind these access gaps. Buying fresh produce from a distant market requires time, transport money, and the physical capacity to carry produce home. For women with young children, farm responsibilities, or income constraints, the community kiosk a short walk away often wins by default.

But community-level kiosks and shops, while convenient, have variable and often limited fruit and vegetable offerings. They reliably stock salt, flour, cooking oil, and packaged snacks. They do not reliably stock tomatoes, leafy greens, or fruit.

The Affordability Barrier

Even for consumers who can reach a well-stocked market, price is a barrier. The brief estimates the median cost of a healthy diet at TZS 1,842 per person per day. The median daily food expenditure in the survey sample was approximately 20% lower than this figure. In practical terms, eating the diet that health requires costs more than most households in the sample are currently spending on food, for a single person, every day.

This is not a marginal gap. A 20% shortfall between what a healthy diet costs and what families actually spend on food suggests that even households that want to eat well, and have the knowledge to do so, are priced out of achieving it consistently.

A System That Needs Redesigning

The research methodology was designed to capture multiple dimensions of this problem simultaneously. The food environment assessment covered physical accessibility, availability and prices across all food groups with particular attention to fruit and vegetables, food safety and hygiene practices, produce quality, and marketing and advertising. The household survey explored drivers of food choice and perceptions of fruit and vegetable safety. The qualitative research captured lived experiences and vendor perspectives on the challenges of offering affordable, safe fresh produce.

Together, these data streams point to the same conclusion: the food environment in Arusha and Kilimanjaro is not a neutral backdrop against which individuals make free choices. It is an active force that shapes what people eat, and it is currently configured in ways that work against healthy diets.

Changing this will require more than nutrition education campaigns. It will require policies that incentivise fruit and vegetable vendors, infrastructure investments that reduce the distance between consumers and well-stocked markets, and supply chain improvements that make fresh produce reliably available and competitively priced at the community level. The research is building the evidence base for exactly this kind of systemic intervention.