Euromonitor International, a global market research organisation, has refuted the claim that it ranked Nigeria as the fourth largest consumer of sugary drinks globally.
Recall that Adewunmi Emoruwa, an X user, had claimed in a tweet dated July 9, 2023, that “Nigeria is the 4th largest sugary drinks consuming country on earth”. We checked the veracity of the claim and found no recent data where Nigeria was ranked as the 4th largest consumer of sugary drinks globally.
After publishing our fact-check which returned the verdict of inaccurate, the claimant sent us a rejoinder, citing multiple news reports, published in 2017, where statistical data by Euromonitor International was quoted. We, however, found that the reports stated that Nigeria was ranked 4th globally in total volume sales of soft drinks in 2016.
We explained the reasons for our position, stressing how it was inaccurate and misleading to claim that Nigeria is ranked as the 4th largest consumer of sugary drinks, in 2023. The claimant declined to take responsibility for the lack of context and went on X (formerly Twitter) to claim that CDD War Room wrongly labelled a “fact” as false.
Following this development, CDD War Room contacted Euromonitor International, whose 2016 data the claimant had referred to in his rejoinder. After multiple interactions, Euromonitor provided insights into their latest data on the sugary drinks market index and also clarified that their data has never shown that Nigeria is ranked 4th largest consumer of sugary drinks globally.
“Our data does not show (and did not show in previous editions) that Nigeria is one of the largest consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages. For instance, Nigeria is not in the top 50 markets in terms of total volume per capita from Carbonates (i.e. Carbonated Soft Drinks), Juice, Sports Drinks or Energy Drinks. Per capita volume remains extremely low in these higher-value, generally sugar-sweetened categories,” Kendra Stoffberg, Euromonitor’s business consultant, stated in an email sent to us.
Nigeria was said to be the 13th largest soft drinks market in 2022, in terms of total volume per capita. The country’s soft drinks market was also ranked 3rd in terms of the total volume of litres consumed in 2022. “However, it is very important to note that we are capturing the retail sale of water sachets within the Bottled water category. This is then captured as Soft Drinks volume in the aggregated figure. Sachet pack of water is the single largest segment of the market in Nigeria. Economy sachet pack (locally called ‘pure water’) is a unique segment, since this functions as drinking water, but is a low-value purchase that is not a sugar-sweetened beverage,” Stoffberg explained.
Furthermore, Soft drinks were described as an aggregation of the following products: carbonated fruit/vegetable juice, bottled water, functional drinks, concentrates, ready-to-drink (RTD) tea, ready-to-drink (RTD) coffee, and Asian speciality drinks.
Carbonates, on the other hand, were described to include sweetened, non-alcoholic drinks containing carbon dioxide. This includes all carbonated products containing fruit juice (sparkling juices) “unless they are tea-based (these are included in carbonated RTD tea) or carbonated Energy drinks, which are included in Energy Drinks.”
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