Blog

Over the past 18 months, COVID has forced many of us to reconsider what we previously thought of as healthy eating habits. Borderless Access surveyed people’s changing eating habits around the world. Here we look at how people living in Sub-Saharan Africa (for this study we focused on Nigeria and South Africa) compared to their global peers, on this topic.

Sub-Saharan Africans are not health-trend followers

Worldwide, three-quarters of people have experimented with an aspect of their diet, with vegetarian preferences and low-sugar and low-fat options being the most popular. While almost 80% of Nigerians say they have tweaked their diet to some degree, around half of South Africans say they haven’t made any changes. Globally, there has been a dramatic shift towards meat-free diets, with 19% of all respondents admitting they had sought out vegan options. By contrast, only 6% of South Africans and 7% of Nigerians had done the same. This may be a reflection of the importance that meat-based meals play in these two cultures. However, when we looked at the number of people looking to reduce the amount of meat they ate overall, Sub-Saharan Africa followed closely behind international trends.

Globally, lockdowns limiting people’s movements, coupled with a genuine fear of contracting COVID-19, have delivered a brutal blow to the hospitality industry. In Sub-Saharan Africa the lockdown rules in some countries have spanned from bans on the sale of alcohol in addition to strict curfews, intensifying the financial predicament for restaurants in particular. 

Borderless Access has done extensive research into the meal-buying habits of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically South Africa and Nigeria. Here we examine data on people’s buying habits, whether short-term or permanent, with regard to visiting restaurants, ordering takeaways, opting for drive-through choices, ordering meal kits to be cooked at home, buying ready-made meals from grocery stores, or choosing to only cook at home.

Social media enjoys high exposure in Africa

Of all the communication channels available today, social media is the channel that most people claim they have been exposed to in terms of brand and advertising messages, since Covid-19. This exposure to social media is particularly high in Africa, with South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria leading the pack in this regard. These African countries claim to be much more exposed to digital media in general than the rest of the world does, and less to physical magazines than their global counterparts.

From wearing masks and washing our hands more carefully than ever to working from home COVID, has changed our behaviour in dramatic and measurable ways. The virus has also had a versatile impact on consumer behaviour, with large swathes of the world’s population changing their well-worn habits within a few short weeks. Following on from our previous pieces about work-life post lockdown and how the pandemic has affected attitudes towards health, we have taken a deep dive into the altered shopping habits of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa and globally.

Globally 34% of people claim to be shopping online more than they did before the pandemic. Sub Saharan Africa hasn’t followed this trend to the same degree with only 16% of South Africans and 27% of Nigerians shopping online more than before. However, this does not mean that people in these countries are unafraid of the virus. Rather people appear to be buying in bulk and visiting physical stores less often than they did before, complementing this shopping with online buying. Only 15% of worldwide respondents say they have not altered their shopping habits. Nigeria (14%) mirrors this but a greater number of South Africans (21%) have not changed the way they shop. Of the three Sub-Saharan countries in question, the last amount of Kenyans (10%) have not changed the way they shop.