Hi ,

On Monday I asked you to be proud of Africa.

Today I have to ask you to be angry.

While we were lighting candles for Africa Day, this is what was happening on our supermarket shelves and in our medicine cabinets:

→ Coca-Cola's Fanta in the UK contains 4.5g of sugar per 100ml. The same Fanta in Nigeria contains significantly more. Why? Because the UK passed a sugar tax in 2018. Nigeria's tax is two US cents per liter. So Coca-Cola reformulated for one market and not the other.

→ Nestlé's Cerelac for African babies contains up to 7.5g of added sugar per serving. The same Cerelac in Switzerland, Germany, France, and the UK contains zero added sugar. (Lab-tested by the Swiss investigative NGO Public Eye, 2025.)

→ Nestlé Nigeria's Milo contains 52.2 g of sugar per 100 g—more than half the powder by weight. Nestlé Australia sells a Milo with 30% less added sugar.

The same factories. The same scientists. The same brand names. Different recipes—depending on whether the local government has teeth.

This is what neocolonialism looks like in 2026.

And it is not only Nestlé and Coca-Cola. The full piece on the blog also covers what Pfizer did to 200 children in Kano in 1996 (11 died, many more left paralyzed, blind, or deaf) and what British American Tobacco has been doing with the cigarettes it ships to African markets since the 1990s.

But I refuse to leave you in despair. The piece ends with five concrete things you can do—starting today.

👉 Read the full piece: Africa Is Not a Dumping Ground

If this lands with you, forward this email to one African parent who needs to see what is actually on the label. Share it on your Stories. Tag your country's food regulator. Multinationals respond to nothing—except organized embarrassment.

Africa is not a dumping ground.

Africa is home.

With love and a clenched fist, Latifah

Parent & Teen Coach | Author of The Phone-Free Teenager and Beyond the Goat Pen

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P.S. This piece was inspired by a video from @spearhead on Instagram. Go follow them—they are part of a wider movement of African voices telling the truth about who profits from our pain.