Winning in Nigeria’s evolving food market

 Inside Africa’s biggest food market

The size of Ni­geria’s popula­tion inevitably saddles it with a huge food bill. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the country’s over 28.9 million households ex­pended circa N15.67 tril­lion on food in 2009/10 alone.

By 2012, Nigeria im­ported food worth N2.3 trillion, though the min­ister of agriculture said the amount spent on food import dropped by N0.91 billion early this year.

As expenditure on food continues to grow, the five classes of food in Nigeria - milk and milk products; meats and fish; nuts, beans, cereals and grains; roots, starchy fruits, and tubers, and fruits/vegetables - have received the unal­loyed attention of manu­facturers, market research analysts, retailers, etc. 

Packaged food and drinks have been at the core of these enquires. This is also true of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

As expected, this em­phasis is partially driven by a desire to profit more from the enormous re­sources Nigerians commit to consumption across social divides. Most of the researches have focused on the best way to price, package, distribute, and the changing tastes and preferences of consumers. We at the BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) have made some enquires.

What is really chang­ing?

In the developing world, as is the case with Nige­ria, a number of factors traditionally influence the choice of food and drinks, chief among which are, price and religious orientation (in one of our mixed method surveys, a respondent indicated that the words HALA should be labeled on Beef Sausage Rolls to indicate that only beef was used in making them).

But apart from these traditional factors, our research shows that, such factors as ‘perceived long-term health implications’ of consuming particular food (especially package food and drinks influence consumption patterns.

We also discovered through several surveys that there is the craving for more natural consumables across the population. So even if food is manufac­tured, consumers stick to brands which pride them­selves as being natural.

The growing trend

Currently in the de­veloped world, there is a conscious shift towards safer food. For instance, in the United States, Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” ini­tiative is all about healthy eating, and there are many such initiatives.

Our research further shows that more Nigeri­ans, especially those in the middle-class and the elite, care about nutritional labels on processed food, healthy eating, and the impact of fat, cholesterol, sodas and sugary drinks on their health and wellbe­ing. Therefore, they tend to buy with this in mind.

In a nationwide survey we conducted in 2012, we asked respondents the question - “Do you exam­ine the nutritional labels of processed food/drinks?” Sixty-eight percent of them said “yes,” which in­ in­dicates that perhaps, more than half of Nigerian are conscious about the health implications of the content of what they eat or drink.

But that is not all; we asked the same respon­dents if they “understand the content of the food la­bels,” and half of them said they understand in part, while 36 percent said they fully understand. Only 14 percent of them said they do not understand at all.

Another survey, which we conducted to deter­mine preferences for non-alcoholic beverages, showed that there is over­whelming distaste for sug­ary sodas. We discovered that there is clear prefer­ence for low-sugar brands, across age and gender. In terms of proportions, a higher percentage of older citizens prefers low-sugar brands or variants (even though they are sceptical about the sweeteners used to sweeten them) com­pared to the younger class.

Almost half, 42 percent, of those we sampled across the states, prefer low-sugar variants, even though they are generally more expen­sive. As expected, they cited health reasons as the primary basis of their choice.

One point that was made clear to us is that Nigeria might be steadily inching towards a society of more discerning con­sumers.

Winning strategies for a changing market

We believe that dis­cerning food and drink manufacturers, restau­rateurs, advertisers and vendors can use this infor­mation to their advantage. Firstly, manufacturers who will get more market share must bow to this aspiration of consumers by making products more natural.

More than this, adver­tisers and PR companies must work to communi­cate these changes to con­sumers. Some brands have worked on this already.

Brands like Nestle’s Pure Life Premium drinking water, Amstel Malt, Power Vegetable Oil, the products of Fumman Agricultural Product Industries, among many others, have a clear history of using some or all of these insights we have pointed out. But the extent to which their advertising strategy has communi­cated with the man on the street is another question.

Generally, we believe that adverts that play up health benefits of manu­factured food and under­score how natural they are compared with their com­petitors will determine who controls the market in the future. Restaura­teurs can also deploy this strategy. The consumer is becoming more discern­ing; therefore the manu­facturer and PR companies should be steps ahead.