The Zambia Bureau of Standards and the National Food and Nutrition Commission have come together, in partnership with the Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network (SBN) Zambia, under a ‘Good Food Logo’ (GFL) initiative to help address the country’s widescale undernutrition, and growing rates of obesity and non- communicable diseases. The GFL certification process and logo is helping the government promote nutrition – as well as small local companies that are providing nutritious food.

Despite food production consistently exceeding domestic requirements, 48% of the population are unable to meet their minimum calorie requirements. Over a third of children under five years old are affected by stunting, 11.6% of infants have a low birth weight, and a third of women of reproductive age suffer from anemia. At the same time, obesity levels are increasing, with around 12.4% of  women and 3.8% of  men affected, while around 6.6% of adults suffer from diabetes.

Labelling local nutrition

GFL is a joint initiative with SBN Zambia to increase access to nutritious foods. It is a front-of-pack logo for products that meet a set of nutrition criteria based on international dietary guidelines from the World Health Organization. The criteria focus on the levels of saturated and trans fatty acids, sugar, salt, dietary fibre, energy and micronutrients in foods and beverages.

The main aims of the initiative, which began in late 2015 are to: enable the government to promote nutrition; support local companies by including local foods and providing a marketing tool; and improve customer decision-making around healthy food through clear labelling. GFL is tailored to the local ‘food basket’, and draws on a database of 300 processed products, with criteria for each product.

The intention was to focus on urban areas because the population is more concentrated, offering a better value proposition for companies, and because rural areas – despite being poorer – have better access to fresh ingredients. People in urban areas are also seen as ‘trend-setters’, influencing behaviour elsewhere.

Early stakeholder engagement

The team had significant initial success in inspiring and recruiting key private and public sector stakeholders, engaging volunteers (to help support the work of the small GFL team), in raising the profile of the logo, and gaining support and significant funding for the roll-out. The team’s approach was the pivotal success factor. For instance, they consulted widely, bringing together input from the public and private sectors – reportedly speaking to all sizes of business and liaising with government bodies, including: the Food and Safety Department of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Commerce, the National Food and Nutrition Commission, and ZABS.

This support from, and engagement with, government stakeholders gave confidence to the GFL team who were amazed by their willingness and commitment, highlighting that government stakeholders rarely missed a meeting. The involvement of ZABS was particularly important for the development of key GFL performance indicators, and in helping to drive the process.