How Innovative Information-Sharing Can Boost Nutrition & Business Performance

A thriving food system is rooted in a thriving market that delivers affordable, safe, nutritious and diverse diets. Yet nutrition is not usually embedded in how companies compete, allocate resources or build brands. Public health goals and market incentives are often not aligned. Without clear incentives, companies have limited reasons to invest in improving nutritional quality at scale.

This challenge shows up clearly across food systems. Millers are at the heart of national food fortification efforts. But they will naturally ask about the business case for adequately fortifying their products. Maize aggregators may question the value of investing in practices that reduce aflatoxin contamination. Agribusinesses may hesitate to invest in the well-being of their workers and suppliers when these outcomes are not directly linked to profitability.

In many markets, the issue is not awareness of the importance of these practices, but the structure that supports sustained investment in them. Value chains often lack trust, traceability and transparency. In Kenya’s maize sector, for example, limited end-to-end visibility makes it difficult to track quality or build confidence across actors. Without reliable data and shared systems that convey them, it becomes harder for companies to justify investments in healthier food.

If nutrition is not visible in how companies measure success, it is unlikely to shape how they invest.

Making nutrition part of how markets work

Innovative information-sharing platforms can help create incentives by making nutrition measurable, visible and comparable. 

The Micronutrient Fortification Index (MFI), implemented through a series of programs supported by the Gates Foundation across markets like Kenya and Nigeria, offers a practical example of how this can work in practice. 

The MFI is an industry-led platform that allows companies to assess, report and compare their food fortification performance. It combines company self-assessment, independent product testing and industry feedback to generate a ranking of fortified products and systems. These results are made publicly available through a digital platform. This platform also serves as a springboard for investments in other aspects of food and supply chain quality.

That transparency changes the role of nutrition in the market. Instead of being treated as a compliance requirement, fortification and food safety become part of how companies demonstrate quality, build brand equity and compete. Leveraging the competitive nature of businesses to improve performance, using transparency and benchmarking is at the heart of the transformation that TechnoServe’s MFI proposes. 

How this works in practice

The experience in Kenya shows how linking nutrition to business systems can shift company behavior.

First, integrate nutrition into core business processes. 

Rather than leaving fortification within quality control teams, it should be embedded across governance, procurement, production and public engagement. The 4PG framework offers a practical way to operationalise this, ensuring that responsibility sits across the business and is connected to how companies make decisions and allocate resources. In practice, this also means shifting from sporadic compliance checks to continuous, floor-level discipline embedded in day-to-day operations—improving operational efficiency, strengthening cost control and protecting working capital by reducing material wastage and minimising supply stock-outs. Companies have reduced product rework by up to 30 per cent and improved audit outcomes by identifying and correcting errors earlier.

Second, make performance visible and comparable. 

Companies need clear, credible ways to measure and demonstrate progress. Digital platforms that collect, validate and aggregate company data can support this, translating inputs into performance rankings that are published regularly. This allows stakeholders, including investors and regulators, to differentiate between companies based on quality and compliance.

Third, create incentives that matter to businesses. 

Transparency alone is not enough. Public rankings, recognition mechanisms and clear signals to the market help turn performance into a competitive advantage. In formal B2B markets, certification and demonstrated compliance can secure higher-value contracts and tenders. When is comes to B2C markets, increasing consumer awareness and the use of recognisable on-pack labelling are beginning to create similar incentives, enabling companies to strengthen brand positioning and capture greater retail market share. In this way, nutrition becomes part of how companies compete and the index acts as a commercial incentive for corporations to maintain or grow market share.

Beyond nutrition: implications for inclusion

The same mechanisms that improve transparency and accountability for nutrition can extend to other dimensions of food systems, including inclusion.

By strengthening traceability and supplier relationships, companies gain greater visibility into their value chains. This creates opportunities to engage farmers, processors and workers more directly, while also creating space to integrate additional metrics related to workforce practices and supplier participation.

As markets place greater value on quality, transparency and performance, they create conditions where more actors choose to invest, driving value upstream, while delivering better quality downstream. Farmers improve production practices, processors upgrade systems and businesses strengthen relationships with suppliers. Within this process, there are opportunities to expand participation across food systems, including for women and youth as entrepreneurs, suppliers, employees and decision-makers.

Delivering healthier foods at a sustained scale

Agricultural and food system innovations align with public health goals when they are built around market incentives that make nutrition part of business performance.

As visibility increases, so does the importance of these issues. Companies that invest in nutritional quality, strong systems, and transparency are better positioned to attract investment and strengthen their market position. Aligning market incentives with nutrition outcomes is already showing results. The growth of the index reflects this shift. 

In Kenya, for example, the KMFI has expanded from an initial pilot of 41 brands to 159 brands across three food vehicles, now covering a significant share of the maize flour, wheat flour, and edible oil markets. The publicly listed brands on the index cover approximately 55 per cent of the maize flour market, 48 per cent of the edible oils market, and 67 per cent of the wheat flour market in Kenya, enhancing trust and reaching millions of people with higher-quality staple foods when families need it most.

The experience of the Micronutrient Fortification Index shows that when nutrition is measurable, visible, and linked to competition, companies respond. They invest, improve, and differentiate themselves in the market. This represents a shift in the role of the private sector in national nutrition strategies, because nutrition becomes part of how companies compete, not an external requirement.