Legal approaches to NCD prevention in Africa: Addressing NCD risk factors through laws and policies promoting healthy diets and physical activity

The African region is facing a rapidly growing and inequitable burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which compounds an already high burden of infectious diseases. While NCDs are largely preventable, legal and regulatory responses to address NCD risk factors remain largely underexplored and underutilized across many African contexts.

This edited volume seeks to address this gap by examining how law can be leveraged to prevent diet-related NCDs and physical inactivity in Africa through an interdisciplinary lens. By situating NCD prevention within broader discussions on human rights, equity, and the commercial determinants of health, it underscores States’ obligations to protect the right to health and related rights, while offering context-specific, evidence-informed insights to inform policy reform. It equally highlights the critical role of academia in fostering interdisciplinary engagement and building capacity at the intersection of law and public health.

The chapters offer country case studies from Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa, analyzing key evidence-informed regulatory interventions to prevent NCDs —including front-of-package nutrition labelling, restrictions on unhealthy food marketing, sugar-sweetened beverage taxation, public food procurement, and the promotion of physical activity. They also critically assess the role of academia in strengthening capacity for NCD prevention and control, and address the need to enhance interdisciplinary education on the issue.

The publication was developed under the auspices of the Global Regulatory Fiscal and Capacity Building Programme (Global RECAP), as part of a collaboration between the Global Center for Legal Innovation on Food Environments at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO).

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Valentina Castagnari

Combating Unhealthy Diets to Reduce Diet-related Non-communicable Diseases Using a Human Rights-based Approach in Kenya

Everlyn Vaati Mutunga, Albert Burudi Wakoli, Peris Mbugua, and Henry Ng’ethe

Promoting Healthy Diets in Africa: EAC’s Role in Curbing Diet-Related Non-communicable Diseases via Food Labelling

Scholastica Joseph Mality

Do Food Labelling Standards Guarantee Access to Nutrition Information for Persons with Visual Disabilities in Tanzania?

Nicodemus Kusena

Assessing the Viability of Legal and Regulatory Measures to Promote Healthy Diets in Ghana: Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax in Focus

Dennis Dangbey, Emmanuel K. Ewul, Esubalew Dadi, and Amos Laar

Restriction of the Advertisement of Unhealthy Food Products to Children in Kenya Through Public Interest Litigation

Everlyn Vaati Mutunga, Emmanuel Konde Kitsao, and Albert Burudi Wakoli

Promoting Healthy Diets in School Environments
in Uganda from a Human Rights-Based Approach

David Kabanda

Harnessing Public Food Procurement as a Tool for Diet-Related Non-Communicable Disease Prevention in Public Health Facilities in South Africa

Tendai Mafuma and Paula Knipe

Promotion of Physical Activity to Prevent Non-Communicable Diseases within the Affordable Housing Programme in Kenya

Paul O. Ogendi

Building Bridges Between Law and Public Health in Academia: A Case Study of Moi University

Maurice Oduor, Faith Yego, and Patrick Kere