Increasing retail sales of healthy foods in Ethiopia: Lessons from MSME surveys in two urban areas

The food environment represents the place in which demand for food meets supply—consumers purchase foods in the food environment, while retailers of the food consumers purchase represent the end of the value chain. In many countries, the food environment is characterized by a large number of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) who sell the majority of healthy foods. Ethiopia fits this description; among healthy food groups purchased by at least one-third of customers within a given week, at least 88 percent of consumers making purchases by them from MSMEs (de Brauw and Hirvonen 2024). This note summarizes lessons from a set of surveys conducted among 1686 MSMEs likely to sell healthy foods in woreda 8 of Kolfe Keranyo in Addis Ababa and in Butajira town in central Ethiopia in late 2023. The first survey concentrated on listing all businesses selling food in selected areas of the two sample locations; the second survey then asked detailed questions about the business environment and practices of selected MSMEs. The majority of surveyed MSMEs can be characterized as either kiosks or small shops; the next most common were restaurants, followed by street vendors and juice shops (de Brauw et al. 2024).