Tanzania has established a strong policy and regulatory framework mandating the fortification of staple foods, including wheat flour, maize flour, edible oils, and salt. Despite this progress, implementation and compliance gaps persist, limiting the public health impact that fortification programmes can achieve Market evidence and engagement with Millers for Nutrition (M4N) highlight that inconsistent compliance and coverage stems from structural barriers within Tanzania’s fortification ecosystem.
Despite progress in policy development, Tanzania’s school feeding
programs still face significant implementation challenges, particularly in delivering nutritionally adequate meals. Although
96% of public primary schools provide meals, these often rely onmonotonous staples like maize and beans, which lack essential micronutrients. As a result, 25% of school-aged children remain stunted, with over one-third experiencing vitamin A deficiency or anemia.
I-CAN Policy Brief, June 2025. This policy brief highlights the challenges and opportunities arising from the need to better integrate climate and nutrition policies in Tanzania. Despite growing recognition of their interconnectedness, policies remain largely fragmented and operate in silos, particularly across health, nutrition, and other food systems sectors. Food and agriculture policies lead in climate-nutrition integration by including concrete strategies and accountability mechanisms. However, outdated legacy policies, weak institutional coordination, and fragmented financing and data systems hinder effective integration and implementation. Key barriers include limited cross-sectoral collaboration, under-resourced coordination structures, and lack of shared data and financing mechanisms. Recommendations include establishing a national Climate–Nutrition Coordination Committee, implementing integrated financing tracking, adopting joint monitoring indicators, and promoting inclusive stakeholder engagement to strengthen policy coherence and accelerate impactful climate-nutrition action in Tanzania.
GAIN marks African Day of School Feeding and International School Meals Day, using these moments to highlight how school meals can improve nutrition, learning outcomes, and local food systems when designed with quality, equity, and sustainability in mind.
Youth in Tanzania are active at the community level but remain largely absent from formal
governance. There is potential for Tanzanian youth to more actively help Tanzania in its ambition to
achieve a nutrition-sensitive, climate resilient, inclusive food system.
As we prepare for the 2025 Global Forum (13 – 17 October) marking ten years of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, we're bringing insights from our work across Africa and Asia on how city governments and local food markets can transform urban food environments and wider food systems.
Walking through any bustling urban food market, from Pemba (Mozambique) to Arusha (Tanzania) and Bogor (Indonesia), is a remarkable experience. Beyond the offerings of fresh, dried, iced and frozen produce, spices, cooked traditional meals, and animated negotiations between vendors and customers, the experience of the market is at the nexus of food systems and nutrition policies and daily realities. These markets are about more than selling and buying food; they are where the future of food systems, within cities and across urban–rural landscapes, borders, and territories, is being lived, innovated, and imagined.
GAIN Tanzania is at the forefront of efforts to tackle micronutrient deficiencies through biofortification, an approach that enhances the nutritional content of staple crops. One of its most impactful initiatives has focused on high iron beans (HIB), a locally accepted, nutrient-rich variety introduced through partnerships with schools and farming communities. By connecting farmers to institutional markets and supporting local seed systems, GAIN is creating a sustainable, scalable model for improving diets and livelihoods. In this interview, Prisca Kokutona Rwezahura, Country Director -GAIN Tanzania, reflects on this journey- sharing insights into policy, partnerships, and what’s next for biofortification in the country.
In April 2025, we took part in the Act4Food Youth Leaders Workshop held in Arusha, Tanzania, a truly transformative experience that deepened our already strong convictions of the power and potential of young people to shape the future of our food systems. Organized by ACT4FOOD with support from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the workshop brought together 22 youth leaders from across the globe working under the ACT4FOOD banner, along with GAIN staff and additional food systems youth leaders from Tanzania.
The food safety regulatory framework in Tanzania is characterized by the absence of a comprehensive, overarching policy framework dedicated solely to food safety. Instead, food safety governance is fragmented across various laws and regulations managed by different institutions each addressing specific aspects of food safety.
